SynthesisCurrent Alzheimer research2022
Cognitive Advantage of Bilingualism Over Monolingualism in Older Adults: A Meta-Analysis.
Synthesis in Current Alzheimer research, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Association Between Cognitively Stimulating Activities and Cognitive Function in Older Adults Living in Residential Care Homes.Psychogeriatrics : the official journal of the Japanese Psychogeriatric Society · 2026Article
- Limited protective effects of multilingualism against age-related cognitive decline.Memory & cognition · 2026Article
- Baseline cognitive status and adherence are associated with cognitive change following language learning in older adults: an exploratory study.Frontiers in aging · 2026Article
- Neurocognitive disorders, depression, and associated factors in younger and older adults from an urban-marginalized area of Peru.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2025Article
- The association of multilingualism with diverse language families and cognition among adults with and without education in India.Neuropsychology · 2025Article
- Protective effect of bilingualism on aging, MCI, and dementia: A community-based study.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2024Article
- Examining the relation between bilingualism and age of symptom onset in frontotemporal dementia.Bilingualism (Cambridge, England) · 2024Article
- A Novel Dual-Language Touch-Screen Intervention to Slow Down Cognitive Decline in Older Adults: A Randomized Controlled Trial.Innovation in aging · 2024Article
- Association between multilingualism and cognitive performance among older adults in rural southern India.Journal of neurosciences in rural practiceArticle
- Multilingual characteristics and cognition among older adults in India.Alzheimer's & dementia (Amsterdam, Netherlands)Article
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Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
objectivesThis study aimed to explore whether bilingual older adults had a cognitive advantage over their monolingual counterparts, and validate the influence of cognition-related (participants' cognitive condition, the cognitive domain assessed), and bilingualism-related factors (second language proficiency, frequency of use, acquisition time, and immigration status of participants)on the cognitive advantage of bilingualism.
methodsThrough a systematic search of nine databases (Web of Science, PubMed, Elsevier Science Direct, Cochrane Library, Embase, PsycINFO, CNKI, VIP and Wanfang) from the inception to April 2021, observational studies with bilingual and monolingual older adults as participants and cognitive function scores as outcome measures were included. Two reviewers independently completed the selection and methodological quality assessment of studies using the JBI cross-sectional study quality evaluation tool and used a pre-designed table for data extraction and sorting.
resultsFourteen studies with 51 tasks were included, involving 3737 participants (bilingual group: 1695, monolingual group: 2042). The overall results of the meta-analysis showed that bilingualism had a small cognitive advantage over monolingualism in older adults [SMD=0.23, 95%CI (0.07, 0.38), P=0.004]. In addition, the subgroup analyses indicated that factors such as participants' cognitive condition, the cognitive domain assessed, second language proficiency, acquisition time, and immigration status of participants impacted the cognitive advantage of bilingualism in older adults.
conclusionBilingualism had a mild cognitive advantage over monolingualism in older adults, which was more prominent in older adults with mild cognitive impairment than in cognitively healthy ones, more evident in global cognitive function and inhibitory control than in other individual cognitive domains, and might be influenced by the proficiency and acquisition time of second language as well as the immigration status of older adults.
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