COGNITIVE AGING OF BILINGUALS: A THEORETICAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

The United States population currently has a growing subpopulation of people 65 years of age and older. A growing population of aging adults means there is an increasingly larger proportion of the population that may suffer from age-related impairments that may affect their quality of life. Thus it is pivotal to understand what can allow this population to maintain a good quality of life while their life expectancy increases. There is a growing body of research that identifies a bilingual advantage as a potential cognitive factor delaying the onset of various age-related clinical impairments. However, there has not been a consensus among this body of research on whether there is a bilingual advantage, and if it is generalizable to all bilingual language speakers. Nor is there a consensus as to if the advantage shown in these studies is in fact language-based. This paper aims to provide a theoretical analysis of the extant research in an effort to summarize and organize the current state of knowledge in this field. A sample of published peer-reviewed articles, as well as unpublished attempts at replicating findings, will be examined to obtain a better understanding of what the overall research in this area is identifying. Brain mechanisms that have been reported as the locus of the bilingual advantage will also be discussed, concluding with potential directions for future research and the overall importance of this work.