onset of dementia. However, monolinguals and bilinguals might have different baseline
cognitive ability. We present the first study examining the effect of bilingualism on later‐life
cognition controlling for childhood intelligence. We studied 853 participants, first tested in
1947 (age= 11 years), and retested in 2008–2010. Bilinguals performed significantly better
than predicted from their baseline cognitive abilities, with strongest effects on general …