“From a very young age, children who are bilingual are using their executive control system and in a way that advances its development,” says Dr. Ellen Bialystok ,a cognitive neuroscientist and Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology at York University in Toronto. The executive control system is, “the basis for every hard thing we do. It helps us pay attention to this and ignore that,” says Dr. Bialystok, adding, “It’s precisely the system the brain calls on to pay attention to one language over the other.”
This means bilingual children constantly use their executive control systems to switch between languages. And frequently exercising this function makes bilinguals better at planning, focusing, multitasking and problem solving. This doesn’t mean bilinguals have a higher I.Q., but it does mean their executive control systems are more advanced.
