Bilinguals showed a larger response than monolinguals. The researchers played the speech syllable “da” to the teens, using electrodes to record the intensity of their auditory brainstem response. Results appeared in the April 30, 2012, advance online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study was funded by NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The rest were proficient only in English. The researchers studied 48 incoming first year high school students, 23 of whom were proficient in both Spanish and English. The scientists decided to test whether bilingual teens, whose brains are still developing, would also show an enhanced response to complex sounds. In past work, the researchers found that musicians have enhanced auditory brainstem responses to the timing and harmonics in sound. They noted that musicians show attention and memory advantages similar to those seen in bilinguals. Nina Kraus and her colleagues at Northwestern University have been using scalp electrodes to analyze activity in the brain circuits that process complex sounds (called the auditory brainstem response). They are also better at focusing their attention-for example, homing in on a voice in a noisy school cafeteria.ĭr. But studies have found that bilingual children tend to be better than monolingual children at multitasking. Children who grow up learning to speak 2 languages tend to learn English words and grammar more slowly than those who speak only English. The finding gives new insight into how our senses help shape our brains.Ībout 1 in 5 children nationwide speak a language other than English at home. A new study found certain brain functions that are enhanced in teens who are fluent in more than one language.
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