What will turn your child into a genius

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

In order for your baby to grow up smart and judicious, various psychologists and educators offer both modern methods and time-tested grandfather's methods. There is one more option - it seems to be one of the most effective.

Why will a bilingual child be smarter?

Children with whom they speak two languages from early childhood have a cognitive advantage over those children who are accustomed to only one language.

We do not consider childish babble (even if it is very peculiar) as a language.

This means that bilingual children are better at solving problems and problems. It's not that young children have many problems, but this skill helps them develop faster. This will come in handy in the future when the baby grows up.

How do we know this?

Numerous studies show that people who speak multiple languages have well-developed communication systems between brain regions involved in planning, analytical thinking and problem solving.

But this was all true only for adults.

Now scientists from the University of Washington spent on babies, whose age was 11 months. The study involved 16 children. Eight of them are brought up in families where they speak only English. Eight more - in families where both English and Spanish are used.

It turned out that the brain of bilingual children actively responds to Spanish and English, starting to process phonetic information. And those kids who are accustomed only to English perceive the sounds of Spanish as background noise.

This means that even before the child begins to speak, he is able to recognize speech by ear.

More importantly, bilingual children showed unusual neurological reactions when responding to Spanish or English. Scientists have registered the active work of the prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex - that is, those areas of the brain that are responsible for analytical abilities and decision-making. But those kids who are accustomed to hearing only one language did not use these areas of the brain at all during the experiment.

What does it mean?

When a child hears two languages at once, he learns to distinguish one from the other. This is the cognitive problem that involves the prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex.

The kid uses these areas of the brain very actively, and such work develops analytical thinking and the ability to make decisions.

Therefore, bilingual children not only learn two languages from birth. They also rapidly develop cognition and other cognitive skills.

Thus, those kids who learn two languages at once from childhood have a huge advantage: they strengthen the connections in the regions of the brain necessary for flexible thinking and problem solving.