Knowing a second language increases intelligence, spoken and reading fluency, even when the language is learned in adulthood. These are the conclusions of a study by the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Researchers led by Professor Thomas Bak from the Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology compared intelligence tests from 262 people. The first test of the group was done when these people were 11 years old. The second test was when they were over 70 years old.

The study, published in the scientific journal Annals of Neurology, concluded that the group had significant cognitive ability improvement than those recorded in their childhood.

Previous research has already concluded that being bilingual can delay several years the development of dementia.

Other research shows that bilingual students do much better on tests such as vestibular and ENEM than monolingual ones. In this sense, psychologist Elizabete Flory, PhD in bilingualism from the Institute of Psychology at USP did worldwide research on bilingual education and found that these students have cognitive advantages.