Bilingual people have better attention spans: Study finds switching between languages leads to 'superfocus'

People who speak more than one language may have a'bilingual advantage' in their ability to stay focused. According to a new study, bilingual individuals are equipped with enhanced attentional control abilities, allowing them to concentrate better on specific tasks than their monolingual counterparts. Researchers suggest this may be the result of a lifetime of switching between different languages. The researchers recruited 99 participants to partake in three psychological tests. In one, known as the Flanker task, the subjects were asked to indicate the direction of a central arrow among rows of others, by pressing a left or right button.