Are People Who Speak More Than One Language Smarter?

I’m Carolyn Presutti with the VOA Special English Health Report, from | In the early nineteen fifties, researchers found that people scored lower on intelligence tests if they spoke more than one language. Research in the nineteen sixties found the opposite. So which is it? Researchers presented their newest studies in February at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The latest evidence shows that being bilingual does not necessarily make people smarter. But researcher Ellen Bialystok says it probably does make you better at certain skills. She says: “Imagine driving down the highway. There are many things that could capture your attention and you really need to be able to monitor all of them. Why would bilingualism make you any better at that?“And the answer, she says, is that bilingual people are often better at controlling their attention -- a function called the executive control sy