Comment Re:Languages or intelligence? (Score 1) 98
Nope. It does not say that your best bet is to learn as a child. In fact I would say that the later learning not working points the real effect:
Selection for people with better brains.
It strongly implies that learning languages does nothing, but that those lucky enough to be born into a household where learning languages as a child is common or easier are also lucky enough to have less deterioration later in life.
This implies that good parents that provide a stable home life when the child is young, give good nutrition, establish strong learning habits end up having less deterioration.
To see if the learning languages had any effect your would most likely need siblings studies where one child learned two+ languages and the other learned only one.
That data would indicate what you and the reporters are implying, but it does not exist in this study.