A review by gabe_reads
The Bilingual Brain: And What It Tells Us about the Science of Language by Albert Costa
3.5
I love short books. This is one I bought on a whim, which I rarely do, but I thought it might be related to my language and thought module. It wasn't, but it was interesting and because it was so short there was little lost. It was about the act of being bilingual and the effects that has.
Some highlights are: infants seem to be able to pick up two languages just as easily/quickly as one; bilinguals have smaller vocabularies in each language (but larger overall) and get more tip-of-the-tongue events; bilinguals seem to have greater ability to supress irrelevant information, including pre-verbal infants; bilingualism is a form of cognitive reserve that protects against age-related decline; emotions feel less strong in a language you learn after childhood, and this leads to being more logical and less prone to emotionally-based cognitive biases.
Some highlights are: infants seem to be able to pick up two languages just as easily/quickly as one; bilinguals have smaller vocabularies in each language (but larger overall) and get more tip-of-the-tongue events; bilinguals seem to have greater ability to supress irrelevant information, including pre-verbal infants; bilingualism is a form of cognitive reserve that protects against age-related decline; emotions feel less strong in a language you learn after childhood, and this leads to being more logical and less prone to emotionally-based cognitive biases.