Bilingualism was not associated with a cognitive advantage among older Mexican adults

We examined whether bilingualism was associated with a cognitive advantage among older urban- or rural-dwelling Mexican adults.

Participants were from the Mexican Health and Aging Study Ancillary Study on Cognitive Aging (Mex-Cog) from urban (N = 1063, 12% Spanish-English bilingual adults) and rural (N = 814, 19% Spanish-Indigenous bilingual adults) areas. Memory, language, and executive functioning were assessed. Weighted linear models stratified by locality evaluated effects of bilingualism on cognitive domains, adjusting for sociodemographic factors.

In urban settings, Spanish-English bilingualism was not associated with cognition in any domain (all Ps > 0.05). In rural settings, Spanish-Indigenous bilingual adults had lower scores across all domains (Ps < 0.01).

There was no evidence of a cognitive advantage among older bilingual adults in Mexico. Indigenous bilingual adults performed worse cognitively compared to Spanish-monolingual peers. Further work is needed to understand the linguistic and sociocultural characterization of older Mexican adults to better evaluate bilingualism and cognitive aging.