Bilingualism is the ability to use two languages equally well. More than half of the world’s population is bilingual. It’s a large phenomenon which is found in all parts of the world, at all sociocultural levels and at all ages.
The New Yorker article released by Maria Konnikova on January 22, 2015 deals with the question of bilingualism advantage in our society. This question directly concerns the author, Maria Konnikova. Indeed, she is a famous writer and psychologist who has a dual culture, Russian and American.
Several researches have shown an interest for the influences of bilingualism on the brain. Early studies have shown that bilingualism is a disadvantage for children verbal development and their IQ. Later, on the contrary Ellen Bialystok has shown that it’s a real advantage in several tasks. According to her, this ability would improve executive control, sustained attention, etc. To investigate this subject, the article is based on De Bruin’s research, a lecturer in the Psychology Department at the University of York interested by bilingualism, language switching, language production, executive control, and cognitive aging. Her first research was composed of four tasks testing inhibitory control between bilinguals and monolinguals. She assumed that bilinguals may have faster reactions in incongruent trials, but finally her first results did not demonstrate an advantage. After that she did a meta-analysis and observed that there is a distorted image of bilingualism effects. To analyze the limits of the real advantages, she conducted a study between active and passive bilinguals. Overall, De Bruin concludes that the bilingual advantage isn’t global or pervasive and it’s sometimes overstated.
This article deals with an important question regarding a wide non-specialists audience. In my point of view the conclusion is disappointing, indeed, the title is extremely attractive and I think that readers would expect a clear answer. Moreover, there are a lot of studies on bilingualism and this article is only based on De Bruin research to answer to a question that affects many people in the world. For example, it would be interesting to introduce other studies more focus on cognitive effects throughout the lifespan. However, I found very interesting the part which develops the advantage of bilingualism in aging and more specifically, in the onset of dementia symptoms. It shows that bilingualism may have no immediate visible effects, but this ability can act in the long-term and influence our aging.
In addition, some longitudinal studies highlight that bilingualism might be a form of continuous cognitive training throughout life. For them, being bilingual is a protective factor for dementia symptoms as compared to monolingual controls (Woumans et al., 2015). On the contrary, Bak (2016), arguing that the differences between bilinguals and monolinguals can be explained more by a cognitive challenging experience, for example migration, than bilingualism itself. Finally, the lack of consensus on bilingualism as a source of neuroprotective factor suggests that further studies are still necessary with more strict definitions and more robust procedures. In the future, it will be very interesting to focus on the interaction of bilingualism with other environmental factors to study their influence on executive control throughout the lifespan.
Key words: bilingualism, language switching, neuroprotective factor, lifespan, executive control.
References
Bak, T. (2016) The impact of bilinguism on cognitive aging and dementia: Finding a path through a forest of confounding variables. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 6, 1-2, 205-226. https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.15002.bak
Bialystok, E., Craik, F., & Freedman, M. (2007). Bilingualism as a protection against the onset of symptoms of dementia. Neuropsychologia, 45, 459-464. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.10.009
Konnikova, M. (2015). Is Bilingualism Really an Advantage?. The New Yorker. Retrieved 20 August 2017, from http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/bilingual-advantage-aging-brain
WOUMANS, E., SANTENS, P., SIEBEN, A., VERSIJPT, J., STEVENS, M. & DUYCK, W. (2015). Bilingualism delays clinical manifestation of Alzheimer’s disease. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. doi:10.1017/S136672891400087X