In their research on the cognitive benefits of bilingualism, Barac and Bialystok highlighted how individuals, especially children who possess linguistic competency in two or more languages, perform better than monolingual individuals on a variety of cognitive measures, such as problem solving tasks.[10] Later in life, bilingual people reportedly have a five-year delay over monolingual individuals developing dementia, since some additional neural pathways are kept open and functional as a result of using two or more languages.[11] Additionally, more professional opportunities become available to the individuals who speak more than one language. For example, because Spanish is the second largest language in the US, there is a high demand for people who are bilingual in Spanish. So on the one hand, it can be concluded that Spanish speakers possess the linguistic capital, however, the political implications that are tied in with Spanish bilingualism bring down the market value of Spanish bilingualism especially among those who speak it natively.[12]