A new University of California, Irvine study, however, has found that monolinguals living in a linguistically diverse environment may be reaping some rewards just by being in the vicinity of multiple languages. “The phenomenon is known as ambient linguistic diversity … that it has the impact of increasing monolingual brain activity similar to what we see in bilinguals, even if the person doesn’t speak or understand a second language,” said co-author Judith Kroll, UCI Distinguished Professor of language science.

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