Learning a second language is good childhood mind medicine,
studies findMay 13th, 2009 in Medicine & Health / Medical
research Kamal de Abrew, Cornell Ph.D. '81, and a professor at
the American National College in Sri Lanka, tests a child in the
Sinhala language. Image: James Gair (PhysOrg.com) -- Teaching
young children how to speak a second language is good for their
minds, report two Cornell linguistic researchers. Learning a
second language does not cause language confusion, language
delay or cognitive deficit, which have been concerns in the
past. In fact, according to studies at the Cornell Language
Acquisition Lab (CLAL), children who learn a second language can
maintain attention despite outside stimuli better than children
who know only one language. That's important, say Barbara Lust,
a developmental psychology and linguistics expert, professor of
human development and director of CLAL, and her collaborator,
Sujin Yang, former postdoctoral research associate at the lab,
because that ability is "resp