These days there are numerous language learning schools and bilingual education schools across Thailand. Knowing more than one language (bilingualism or multilingualism) allows you to communicate with people from other cultures and countries, which can open doors for friendship, love, networking and work collaborations, or simply expand your horizon and worldview.
But beyond those benefits, does being bilingual actually make you smarter too? Over the past few years, the US media has spread the message that bilingualism has various benefits on the brain and cognition, according to experts (cognitive psychologists).
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How or why might bilingualism influence the brain and its functions?
Let’s say Fon is a native Thai speaker, and she also knows some Chinese. She speaks Thai to her friends and family, but when she’s in her Chinese class or wants to speak to her Chinese grandparents she uses Chinese. Because she is learning more than one set of language (vocabulary, grammar rules), she has to switch to the appropriate language and inhibit the irrelevant language, depending on who she’s talking to. This ability to juggle the two languages in mind might have benefits on her brain and cognition more generally.
These claims are known as the “bilingual advantage hypothesis”, arguing that bilingual brains and ways of thinking show several benefits that monolinguals’ don’t. The argument is that knowing a second language is like brain training that helps improve other cognitive abilities like working memory, multitasking, and prioritizing. Bilingualism may even prevent symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. So being bilingual is like taking your brain to the gym; it gets extra exercise, so the brain is in better shape. This idea is similar to the marketing scheme for apps that claim to improve your memory by having you do some puzzles.
But how much are these claims supported by scientific research? This has been hotly debated among researchers in recent years. Scientific studies have found contradicting results; some find evidence for the bilingual advantage, but other studies don’t.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the claims that have been made, and see whether it’s backed up by cutting-edge scientific evidence:
1. Being bilingual doesn’t only affect your language abilities, but it also changes how your brain performs other cognitive abilities.
Yes, there is some evidence that the cognitive benefits of bilingualism may extend to other aspects of cognition. When bilingual and monolingual teens do lab tasks that requires multitasking, measures of brain activity showed that bilinguals are doing the task more efficiently than monolinguals. Other studies have found that bilingual children perform better than monolingual children on tasks of creative thinking, which require finding numerous and innovative solutions to a certain problem. For example, children could be asked to think of as many uses for an object as possible, beyond its typical usage. Bilingual children may perform better on these tasks of creative thinking because they know two sets of vocabulary for different concepts, and from this vast knowledge they must select the appropriate words to communicate (multiple solutions to one problem).
Nevertheless, the advantage in creative thinking may be limited to verbal tasks only. Monolingual children performed similarly to bilingual children when tested on creativity tasks that were nonverbal, for example, picture construction or picture completion.
2. Knowing more than one language protects against Alzheimer’s disease in old age.
Yes, there is evidence that being bilingual does delay the onset of dementia symptoms (Alzheimer’s type) by 4-5 years… and that’s remarkable! No known drug has this effect. According to researchers, experience with two languages may protect certain cognitive abilities from brain damage, although this is related to the level of education and lifestyle as well.
Note that being bilingual delays the symptoms of Alzheimer’s but not the disease itself! If you are predisposed to developing Alzheimer’s, you will still be diagnosed with it eventually. But those who know a second language may develop the symptoms later than monolingual older adults who have the same risk of developing Alzheimer’s.
Overall, these claims regarding the Bilingual Advantage Hypothesis seem to be true, to some extent. But we should be cautious in making strong claims about the bilingual advantage because there are many other factors to consider. For instance, the cognitive benefits might depend on the different contexts of using the second language.
Let’s consider these two cases. Mint learned in English in bilingual school in Thailand, but she mostly speaks Thai at home and when she goes out. On the other hand, Linda also learned English as her second language but she learned it in the Philippines where most people are Tagalog-English bilingual. Linda gets to use both languages in all contexts, whether at school, at home, or when she goes out. She might even use both Tagalog and English in the same sentence (known as “code switching”). So even though both girls learned English as a second language, Linda might show more bilingual advantage because she gets more “practice” switching frequently between the two languages than Mint does.
So what’s the final verdict? Are bilinguals smarter than monolinguals? The answer is: it depends on what you mean by “smarter”, and it depends on which bilinguals you’re testing. Learning two languages does change the brain and how it performs certain cognitive abilities, but not all bilinguals experience the same consequences. More research is needed to clarify how the consequences of bilingualism differs across different bilinguals and contexts.
Even if bilingualism doesn’t produce these cognitive advantages, being able to speak another language is already a benefit in and of itself; at the very least, you can speak to people who don’t speak your native language. So it’s worth the time and monetary investment to learn another language. :)
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References
Abutalebi, J., Della Rosa, P. A., Green, D. W., Hernandez, M., Scifo, P., Keim, R., … & Costa, A. (2011). Bilingualism tunes the anterior cingulate cortex for conflict monitoring. Cerebral Cortex, 22(9), 2076-2086.
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Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I., & Freedman, M. (2007). Bilingualism as a protection against the onset of symptoms of dementia. Neuropsychologia, 45(2), 459-464.
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Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I., & Luk, G. (2012). Bilingualism: consequences for mind and brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(4), 240-250.
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Kroll, J. F. (2019). Bilingualism reveals the networks that shape the mind and brain. Keynote presented at the Psychonomic Society's 60th Annual Meeting, Montreal, Canada. Retrieved from https://www.psychonomic.org/page/2019keynote
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Linck, J. A., Kroll, J. F., & Sunderman, G. (2009). Losing access to the native language while immersed in a second language: Evidence for the role of inhibition in second-language learning. Psychological Science, 20(12), 1507-1515.
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Okoh, N. (1980). Bilingualism and divergent thinking among Nigerian and Welsh school children. The Journal of Social Psychology, 110(2), 163-170.
