The YouTube video called “Language On The Brain Podcast Episode 1: Bilingualism” is part of the Language on the Brain Podcast that from The Interesting Channel published on May 14, 2014. According to the speaker, she speaks of a balanced bilingual who learns two languages at a young age together and the dominate bilingual who learned one language first and took on a second one later in life. She states that those with “high proficiency in one or more languages would induce more focal activity in core regions of the language network in the brain whereas a lower proficiency would be accompanied by a wider distribution of activity in less core areas. ” She then speaks more of how defining bilingual is confusing since some consider it to mean having knowledge of how to speak a language versus being completely fluent in the language. She then says that it is unclear as to what it means to be fluent or the uncertainty as to what constitute as a language. She also discusses how there is debate as to whether bilingual education is good for children and how in the 1960s that bilingual education “would be detrimental to a child’s education, that they wouldn’t develop a full knowledge of either language.” She claims that there are actual cognitive advantages of multilingualism and bilingualism. For example, “it has actually been proving that the onset of various types of dementia happens later in multilingual… you keep your brain active, you use more of your brain areas.” Also, “being bilingual gives you a sense of metalinguistics, so you literally think about what you are saying,” which helps you think more deeply and make better decisions. She promotes the fact that you have exposure to foreign films and music.
This source is useful to my guiding questions as it demonstrates some basics of bilingual language, metacognition, and the brain.
Video/ Podcast Source: Cat (Producer). (2014, May 14). Bilingualism [Show #1]. Language On The Brain. Podcast retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgmQh8SWh2A
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