Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study • Hacker News Board

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#101

Post by Kamq » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 1:47 AM UTC

RajT88 wrote: post #79

AdrenalinMd wrote: post #50

As someone fluent in four languages*, I agree. I would even argue that the opposite of an advantage is true. Consider this: it adds unnecessary cognitive load. When trying to think of a word, it comes to you in four different languages, which isn't helpful! I speak four languages out of necessity, not by choice. When you can focus on fewer languages, your proficiency in them improves. Although I can speak four langua…

> Consider this: it adds unnecessary cognitive load. When trying to think of a word, it comes to you in four different languages, which isn't helpful! This has been my experience as well. My native language is English, and I do just fine in it. But I've also studied a couple other languages, and when I try to put together sentences, whatever word is closest sometimes pops out. I almost never find myself accidentally…

> I almost never find myself accidentally sticking English words into sentences, but I will frequently mix words from my second and third languages.

Which is perfectly valid english.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#102

Post by EGreg » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 1:47 AM UTC

“ and these effects all disappeared when the groups were matched to remove potentially confounding factors”

I would be interested to know how they managed to remove the potentially confounding factors.

To me, it seems clear: bilinguals whose language isn’t a major language of the country often come from immigrant families. Immigrants have a great work ethic and teach their kids in the foreign language. Then the kids work hard to fit in and learn the other language, too. They tend to be less interested in “decadent” activities and end up overachieving. This is especially true for immigrants from formerly Communist countries that prioritized STEM.

In the past, people learned Latin or German to access scientific literature etc.

Not to mention that learning two DISPARATE languages enables people to triangulate better on other languages and ways of thinking

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#103

Post by gwern » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 1:47 AM UTC

kranke155 wrote: post #4

Without access to the actual Paper I don’t know anything about the cognitive test that was performed, so no idea what to think of it. Without the actual Paper we are just reading a footnote.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=15251117179700741...

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#104

Post by lisasays » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 1:47 AM UTC

bugglebeetle wrote: post #83

lisasays wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland is a bad example, because it's socially and multilingual. Whereas if one looks at basically monolingual societies (e.g. most of the countries in Europe) one find that not only is not everyone bilingual (and no, "everyone" does not speak English) -- multilingualism definitely correlates with class and education.

Why would Switzerland be a bad example in this context? The point of the study is that bilingualism does not afford cognitive advantage, so you have to consider countries where bilingualism is not associated with the factors you cite to see if this bears out. Pointing at other countries that function in the same way as the US in regard to a dominant language would just demonstrate more of the same as is found there.

Most people live in countries that are basically monolingual ("dominant" as you say), though not in the the naive, sheltered way that the US is.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#105

Post by AnnaPali » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 1:51 AM UTC

AdrenalinMd wrote: post #50

As someone fluent in four languages*, I agree. I would even argue that the opposite of an advantage is true. Consider this: it adds unnecessary cognitive load. When trying to think of a word, it comes to you in four different languages, which isn't helpful! I speak four languages out of necessity, not by choice. When you can focus on fewer languages, your proficiency in them improves. Although I can speak four langua…

Assimil Dutch is an amazing course! It brings you to B2 in about 45 hours of applied study (just doing as the instructions tell you!) I really like Assimil courses in general but the polyglot community widely believes that the Dutch course is their best of all.

Good luck!

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#106

Post by dilawar » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 1:51 AM UTC

Remind me of an article where three anthropologists were debating what does mean to be civilized. "Knowing one language makes us human, knowing more than one language make us civilised." is the only thing I now remember from that reading.

Does knowing more than one languages make you more reflective/liberal?

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#107

Post by AnnaPali » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 1:52 AM UTC

AdrenalinMd wrote: post #91

pb7 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also originally from Moldova and speak the same 4 languages. If I had to guess, this is fairly common in Moldova -- at least in private schools. I would say there is a very mild advantage, even recognizing vaguely similar words in other languages when traveling. I find Russian to be very useful in a way that French and Romanian aren't. English, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and Spanish are the most "useful" as they…

Oh, salut ! (Romanian "salut" not French "salut", lol) It's indeed still useful when traveling to those countries that speak these languages. But that's mere few weeks per year. English could have worked anyway as everyone is becoming proficient in English.

> Romanian "salut" not French "salut"

I always loved the Romanian joke where someone says "mersi" and then you reply "oh, I didn't know you were French" but I suppose that comes up with many words.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#108

Post by fnord77 » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 1:53 AM UTC

eru wrote: post #17

jvanderbot wrote: post #9

I am a mild pariah among my parent friends for suggesting that 'spanish immersion daycare' was a way of recruiting lower-cost childcare workers (in the USA). They're everywhere , and it seems they are the most common type of daycare, actually. (upper midwest, usa)

You say it like it's a bad thing. This is an awesome way to provide both an extra language when kids don't have much else to do and fit it easy to pick them up, _and_ it saves on costs? What could be better?

> an extra language

I learned spanish at a young age and I find it pretty useless. The last time I used it in the past 20 years was watching Casa De Papiel

Really wished I learned something like German or Chinese instead

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#109

Post by mpsprd » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 1:54 AM UTC

version_five wrote: post #14

jvanderbot wrote: post #9

I am a mild pariah among my parent friends for suggesting that 'spanish immersion daycare' was a way of recruiting lower-cost childcare workers (in the USA). They're everywhere , and it seems they are the most common type of daycare, actually. (upper midwest, usa)

Sort of related: in english Canada, french immersion often ends up being a way to send your kids to a better public school, and for whatever reason the english / french kids (as in enrolled in those programs) tend to split along socioeconomic lines.

I'm curious about how french immersion works in English speaking Canada. It's something seen as "higher class"?

I live the mirror situation: french speaking young parent intending to make my child bilingual at a young age.

Here english is obviously seen as an edge and is studied a lot.

Re: Bilingualism affords no general cognitive advantages: Study

#110

Post by pazimzadeh » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 1:55 AM UTC

It's pretty obvious to people who speak 2+ language that there are trade-offs between "going deep" in one language and having "surface-level" knowledge of many languages.

The one thing they found which bilinguals might be better at has to do with digit recall, which actually agrees with previous research that bilinguals are 'more logical' in their second tongue and 'more emotional' in their native tongue.

https://news.uchicago.edu/story/communicating-foreign-langua...

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-02935-000

https://www.languagemagazine.com/2023/04/21/bilinguals-react....

So the results may have been different if each participant was allowed to take the test in their mother tongue.

The list of things they tested is way too small to conclude that there are no general cognitive advantages. What is "general" anyway?

Things they didn't test:

- the ability to learn new languages

- the ability to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words from context clues

- ability to communicate or get by in a brand new/unfamiliar environment

- ability to detect BS (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8423309/)

- ability to improvise

- abstract thinking (not being limited by a linear inner voice)

- etc...

There are many confounding factors they didn't test for. e.g., what if the bilinguals are more logical, but have weaker comprehension of the question? do those things cancel out? Or, if being multilingual makes you "overthink" prompts and maybe you get penalized on time in standardized tests, etc...

According to their questionnaire, the "bilingualness" of participants was self-reported, all you had to do was enter a number between 1 and 20 for the number of languages you speak.. It would have been better if written and spoken proficiency in each of the second languages had been tested and used to correlate with the results.

I could go on. I think this is actually one of the worst studies I've ever read in terms of "confidence of the title" vs. "what they actually tested."