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Multilingual People Have Healthier, More Engaged Brains? (2016)

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Re: Multilingual People Have Healthier, More Engaged Brains? (2016)

#101

Post by jddj »

theonemind wrote: post #90

That seems like a lot of wasted associations. I already have an (english) word for most concepts, and don't really feel like I need a second word for, say, "bread", although words for new concepts or concepts grouped in interesting ways might have some value. I like the Swedish word "lagom", which doesn't seem to have an English analog. It'd interest me to know what aspect(s) of multilingualism promotes a healthier b…

There's been some research which has shown the reframing being effective, but they only studied whether considering eg. a trolley problem in any second language produced significantly different results compared to a native language.

Somewhat ironically in the context of wasted associations, the article is in Spanish. But this is one link: https://www.psicologosonline.cl/articulos/para-decidir-con-f...

Re: Multilingual People Have Healthier, More Engaged Brains? (2016)

#102

Post by laretluval »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #4
laretluval wrote: post #2

Check back in 10 years after the replication crisis has burned through this field.

It seems far-fetched to you that learning a second language has benefits for the brain?

Yes, I would bet that there is no causal effect.

Re: Multilingual People Have Healthier, More Engaged Brains? (2016)

#103

Post by leftyted »

johnisgood wrote: post #86
leftyted wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having studied a few languages, I don't agree with the idea that "another language is an entire other way of thinking about the world". That's not how it felt to me. There's a linguistic-philosophical debate over this topic: Linguistic Relativity (or Sapir-Whorf) vs Universal Grammar (generally attributed to Chomsky). Though both theories are plausible, I find the Universal Grammar theory more convincing. There are g…

Perhaps "another language is an entire other way of thinking about the world" is incorrect as long as that another language is another natural language. You might find http://www.lojban.org/files/why-lojban/whylojb.txt interesting.

Very interesting, thanks for the link.

Re: Multilingual People Have Healthier, More Engaged Brains? (2016)

#104

Post by gwern »

JamesBarney wrote: post #55
gwern wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... Let's say that OP sounds like it may be oversimplifying a wee bit. The Replication Crisis already came for this one. (And yes, you should be skeptical of any claim to cognitive benefits.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_effects_of_multiling... https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/life-bilingual/20190... https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/bilingual-... https://www.theatlantic.com/scie…

Is it disruptive to your daily routine to be suddenly teleported to someone's bathroom anytime they whisper three times "this public policy intervention has an effect"?

Especially when I'm in my own bathroom.

Re: Multilingual People Have Healthier, More Engaged Brains? (2016)

#105

Post by distantaidenn »

mistahenry wrote: post #84

In my experience, learning a second language has clogged my brain up a bit. Maybe it’s healthier and more engaged, but it’s sometimes hard to say if it’s truly been beneficial from a cognitive perspective. I’ve certainly been humbled and become more confident in pushing through mistakes made in public. It’s also a really cool skill. But it often feels like my memory for words is like a unordered linked list. Sometime…

I somewhat agree. I'm a native English speaker, but I use Japanese daily and learning Korean, now. Sometimes it is a bit of a jumble, but I attribute it more to laziness than anything else. My brain just reaches for the easiest word, and I have to struggle to find the correct one.

As a bit of an aside, because of the sentence order and cognates, when speaking Korean, I often first go from English to Japanese and finally can stumble out some broken sentence.

Japanese to Korean is almost a one to one mapping when speaking simple sentences, based on both languages being agglutinative and having SOV ordering.

Re: Multilingual People Have Healthier, More Engaged Brains? (2016)

#106

Post by Avamander »

leftyted wrote: post #79
dagav wrote: post #36

I've been learning a second language, one that is very different than English, and it has been a complete mind fuck. I can see why knowing two languages would have a positive effect on your brain: another language is an entire other way of thinking about the world. Language is an artifact of the culture that created it, and it crystallizes the values and beliefs of that culture. By learning the language, you can ente…

Having studied a few languages, I don't agree with the idea that "another language is an entire other way of thinking about the world". That's not how it felt to me. There's a linguistic-philosophical debate over this topic: Linguistic Relativity (or Sapir-Whorf) vs Universal Grammar (generally attributed to Chomsky). Though both theories are plausible, I find the Universal Grammar theory more convincing. There are g…

Did you learn languages in the same family tree (e.g a German learning English) or not? Just curious.

Re: Multilingual People Have Healthier, More Engaged Brains? (2016)

#107

Post by Avamander »

jotm wrote: post #8
xt11 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is specifically about children who grow up bilingually. Until this "breakthrough", those children were thought to be disadvantaged, because they did not learn a single language in the same depth as the majority (so was the reasoning at least). As usual, it is hard to correct for other factors; children who grow up bilingually usually belong to privileged classes.

Easy - study children in Eastern Europe/Baltic states. Lots of people grow up bilingual, with English as a third language, too.

Lots of those people become tetralingual because they have time left over the three languages that are taught anyways. E.g. Russian and Estonian as native language, English plus a fourth language from school. Those who do not have a bilingual family only learn three during the same time. E.g. Estonian, English and Russian.

I kind-of envy the first group of people because it's cool to be able to access so many spheres of culture, I often use Google Translate to try and get a glimpse of Russian forums for example, it's just very different and so useful because of that.

Re: Multilingual People Have Healthier, More Engaged Brains? (2016)

#108

Post by tmm84 »

dagav wrote: post #46
point78 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What language?

Hebrew.

This the current language I have been trying to learn lately. I think the hardest part to learning it has been finding good sources that teach it. Is the word order the part that you marvel at or something else? For me, it has been the simplistic way of saying things that seem like bad English but are beautiful Hebrew (For example, "The painter painted the painting with paint.").
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