That biological difference in the auditory nervous system appears to also enhance attention and working memory among those who speak more than one language, they say.

这一听觉神经系统上的生物学差异似乎还加强了能说多种语言的人集中注意力的能力和工作记忆。

“Because you have two languages going on in your head, you become very good at determining what is and is not relevant,” says Dr. Nina Kraus, a professor of neurobiology and physiology at Northwestern, who was part of the study team. “You are a mental juggler.”

参与了这项研究的西北大学神经生物学和生理学教授克劳斯博士说，由于你的脑子里运行着两种语言体系，你会变得非常善于决定哪些声音有意义，哪些声音没有意义；你的思维就如同在表演杂技一般。

In the new study, Kraus and her colleagues tested the involuntary neural responses to speech sounds by comparing brain signals in 23 high school students who were fluent in English and Spanish to those of 25 teenagers who only spoke English. When it was quiet, both groups could hear the test syllable — “da” — with no trouble, but when there was background noise, the brains of the bilingual students were significantly better at detecting the fundamental frequency of speech sounds.

在这项新研究中，克劳斯和她的同事们通过对比两组受试者的大脑信号，测试了他们对声音的下意识神经反应。这两组受试者中，一组是23名能讲流利英语和西班牙语的高中生，另一组是25名只会讲英语的十几岁的青少年。当周围环境安静时，两组受试者都能听到测试音节“da”，而且毫不费力。但是如果背景嘈杂，讲双语的学生明显更善于识别语音的基本频率。

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