Bilingualism as a potential protection against age-related working memory decline

Abstract

The hypothesis that bilingualism can impact on the performance of children has been under great scrutiny for a long time. However, it has been only recently that the impact of this experience has been researched throughout life and aging. Evidence of bilingualism as some kind of protection against age-related cognitive decline has been received with great enthusiasm, as aging is the main risk factor for dementia syndromes. The present study investigated the extension of bilingualism impact on the working memory of adults and older adults. Therefore, we analysed the performance of 136 bilinguals and monolinguals on the N-back task. Our results revealed that bilinguals and monolinguals behaved similarly in terms of accuracy. However, older bilinguals were faster than older monolinguals, which means lower cognitive costs for bilinguals. Moreover, the magnitude of the difference between older bilinguals and younger bilinguals regarding reaction time was lower than for monolinguals, which suggests that bilingualism is acting as a cognitive reserve and delaying age-related cognitive decline.