Gold’s team compared task-switching speeds for younger and older adults, knowing they would find slower speeds in the older population because of previous studies. However, they found that older adults who spoke two languages were able to switch mental gears faster than those who didn’t.

古尔德的团队比较了年轻人和老年人转换任务的速度，基于之前的研究，他们知道将得到的结果是老年人转换任务的速度更慢。然而他们又发现，会说两种语言的老年人转换思维的速度要比只说一种语言的要快。

The study only looked at life-long bilinguals, defined in the study as people who had spoken a second language daily since they were at least 10 years old.

研究的对象仅为一辈子都说两种语言的人，一辈子说两种语言在这个研究中的定义是：从10岁以前开始每天都使用第二种语言的人。

First, Gold and his team asked 30 people, who were either bilingual or monolingual, to look at a series of colored shapes and respond with the name of each shape by pushing a button. Then, they presented the participants with a similar series of colored shapes and asked them to respond with what colors the shapes were by pushing a button. Finally, researchers presented participants with a series of colored shapes, but they mixed prompts for either a shape or a color to test participants’ task-switching times.

首先，古尔德和他的团队让30个人看一系列有颜色的形状，然后按下按钮回答他们看到的是哪种形状，这30个人中既有说一种语言也有会说两种语言的人。然后，他们再给实验参与者看类似的上了色的形状，让他们按按钮回答他们看到形状的颜色是什么。最后，研究者们给参与者一系列有颜色的形状，不过问题中既有让参与者回答形状的，又有让他们回答颜色的，测试他们任务转换所花的时间。

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