Several researches, mainly the work of Bialystol and colleagues have tried to demonstrate cognitive benefits of being bilingual. Bilinguals seems better in tasks involving inhibition and other executive functions, but meanwhile other researches failed to demonstrate this bilingual advantage. There are very interesting papers in the litterature to provide foof for thought.

Ricardo: Research aiming at finding “benefits” of multilingualism ends up finding “costs” of multilingualism, too. In addition, these findings explicitly or implicitly show costs and benefits of monolingualism, respectively, for the simple reason that such research uses monolingual populations as benchmark. Current research paradigms reflect converse findings about multilingualism versus monolingualism, in fashion in the early 20th century, for the same reason.

Comparative endeavours of this kind, always taking monolingualism as indisputable “norm” of linguistic behaviour, cannot but find differences between the populations so compared. Whether we call these differences benefits or costs, and which of the two we highlight among our findings as well as in the titles of our publications is of course a matter of choice.

These two posts of mine may be of interest to you, at my blog _Being Multilingual_:

‘Multilingual woes and joys’, http://beingmultilingual.blogspot.com/2010/11/multilingual-woes-and-joys.html

‘The effects of monolingualism’, http://beingmultilingual.blogspot.com/2011/07/effects-of-monolingualism.html

Madalena

Ricardo,

The evidence you discuss already provide a good start to your question as to whether they may be a cognitive benefit to being bilingual, but they beg further questions as to what the benefit is, why the benefit occurs and how the benefit occurs, as well as the converse questions as to whether there may be disadvantages or even deficits as a result of bilingualism, again with the associated how and why.

As Alexandra points out, the question as posed is rather broad and non-specific as to exactly what you mean by bilingualism. In particular, do you mean

learning language in a bilingual or multilingual home/environment? OR

learning a second language at school, as an infant, child, teenager or adult?

Then there is the question of what you mean by cognitive advantage, and is this as distinct from the obvious social and linguistic advantages?

In relation to schooling in a second language, there is a clear advantage in learning the second language at a younger age, and learning it in an embedded context, and without this combination of early start and contextual/cultural/linguistic embedding a person is not likely to become bilingual in the sense of being indistinguishable from a native speaker in either language.

In fact, even if the child is brought up from birth in a bilingual context, this is not assured and we distinguish compound bilingualism from coordinate bilingualism.

Compound bilinguals don't exhibit native level performance in either language, although they are fully proficient in the use of both. Typically this is associated with artificial and arbitrary exposure to the languages (e.g. we decide to speak German on Mondays, French on Tuesdays, English on Wednesdays - this is a decision parents of different backgrounds, or living in a foreign country, sometimes make to one degree or another).

A coordinate bilingual has a split personality - language, culture, gestures, modes of thought all are indistinguishable from that of a native speaker, although there will be limitations of experience and vocabulary as with any speaker of the language. Typically these people learn their respective languages in corresponding contexts. The mother might speak English, the father French, and living in Germany other contexts are German. Au pairs, and grandparents with another language also create a nexus that can provide a consistent context and language for native level acquisition.

Note that here the compound bilingual actually has a deficiency in respect of both languages and is not a true member of either linguistic community, while the coordinate comes over as a native speaker but may have unusual holes in their coverage of the language, including in particular vocabulary and idioms. For example all the mother role from nappies/diapers to baths to shopping trips might be in English as the father never does these things and doesn't talk about them.

These days with readily available long distance transportation and communication and ubiquitous media (in multiple languages in many countries) these questions and considerations may have blurred their validity in the years since the research of half a century ago that first explored these questions, and make it hard to distinguish and compare populations.

Some of the biggest advantages of bilingualism are the obvious - facility with languages, particularly related ones, tends to be enhanced, but it is not clear that multiple European helps much with Chinese - although strategies from learning languages at a school or as an adult can transfer. Another one is cultural breadth - those that are multilingual and well traveled, irrespective of whether they are indistinguishable from a native speaker, generates an arguably more well rounded person. I can't cite research for this, but my own experience is that I gravitated to friends who had similar depth of understanding that there's a world out there.

In terms of non-linguistic non-social non-cultural cognitive capability, the kind of results you mention would be examples, but the inhibition of other languages you mention is a function of coordinate bilingualism and the compound bilingual tends to mix them up, and even the coordinate bilingual will amongst insiders substitute from the other language on encountering the lacunae in vocabulary. So this is at best a relative effect. Questions about adjusting to changes in environment may similarly be related to the coordinate exposure to multiple environment rather than to the mere exposure to multiple languages within the same environment.

A major part of cognition is the ability to see similarities and make connections and understand concepts, and the richer background of the bilingual, or more particularly the background in a different language from the one they currently are operating in, may lead to different insights and thus lead to more creativity and inventiveness - as an outgrown of the same anecdotally broader experience I mentioned in the social context.

Bilingualism/multilingualism | Geolinguistics | Languages Of The World | @scoopit http://sco.lt/7uCZBR

Why children should be bilingual | @scoopit http://sco.lt/5bD8PR

David,

Your explanation is very interesting and helpful. I agree with data that suggest late onset learning even among elderly could really lead to some improvement in cognition. As you said, how, where and why depends on methodological divergences across the researches and further investigations should focus on it.

Madalena,

Your works are really interesting and I will look this over. It seems that there must be an optimal balance between benefits and costs to allowed us take learning languages as an effective improvement of cognitive functions. Many thanks!

bilingualism has its advantages and disadvantages of its own. Some of the advantages (from the children development point of views):

1. Brain imaging research shows that the person who acquired second language earlier and to greater proficiency develop denser neuronal connections in the left hemisphere.

2. According to Bialystok & Martin (2004), the bilingual children performed better on tests of selective attention, analytical reasoning, concept formation, and cognitive flexibility.

3. There are also advantages from the side of metalinguistic awareness for example detection of errors in grammar and meaning.

4. The children also may transfer the phonological awareness skills from one language to another and its generally happen if the two language have similar phonological features and letter-sound correspondences.

The author of the book of Child Development, Laura E. Berk also conclude that all the advantages stated above may enhance reading achievement of the bilingual children.

Some of the disadvantages that may occur:

1. Based on book "The Developing Child" wrote by Boyd, D., Bee, H., (2012), the bilingual might reach language development milestone a little bit late than monolinguals. This might happened because of the child need to learn double vocabulary, grammars and other language component.

2. There is another research from the year of 1929, showed that the monolinguals consistently outperformed the bilinguals in IQ test performances.

3.Several study also have shown that the bilinguals acquired less vocabulary in each language compared to the monolinguals. However, the bilinguals have greater vocabulary of both languages compared to the monolingual children.

These are just some of the findings from a few research.. hope it helps.

nor lini kamarul aizan,

That's really interesting, and improve my knowledge in this topic. I believe that bilingualism has different effects in adults comparing to children. The big question is "how we could treat this differences and apply strategies to benefit both of them?". Very helpful, thanks!

Ricardo,

I think your distinction re: adults vs children is interesting and important. I know that some adults revert to their first language in old age. This sometimes creates problems since care facilities do not usually have staff who are multi-lingual, especially in central European languages (many of those now old left central Europe during WWII; they learned English...some had professional jobs...but in their old age eg. late 80s - 90s, revert to the first language and no longer seem able to process English. Many staff are English, Spanish bilingual but Lithuanian, for example, is not a romance language and so oral communication breaks down.

Do you know of any research addressing this issue?

Kate

Kate Lindemann

Senior Scholar Institute of Aging and Policy

Kate

Unfortunately, I don't know much about people becoming unable to speak their second or third language because of some cognitive impairment, but I certainly agree with you. I have treated a patient an Alzheimer's disease patient that lost her hability speaking Brazilian Portuguese and then she turned to her native French language . I believe these patients have lost their second or third language because of being part of more recent memory archives, which go away at earlier stages of the disease. It's really interesting hearing from you. Thanks!

Ricardo,

Thanks for this post. Your example seems to follow what I have found.

Alzheimer's...if you work with persons with MCI or Alzheimers, you might be interested in a specific Kirtan Chant - research study showed its use reversed MCI and so slowed Alzheiemr's it was as thought 'stopped'. The study ended ($$$) before it was used long enough to see if Alzheimer's would also show reversal.. Here is a link to info:

http://www.anti-aging-articles.com/Kirtan-Kriya-Brain.html

Hope it might be useful. I know that some children of Alzheimer's patients have begun doing this chant....takes only 10-12 min.

Kate

I'll look this over. Thanks!

An interesting video about language switching by bilinguals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw2riItnlEE

Jean-Marc and fellow researchers,

A very interesting study. This study shows the switching from one 'western' language to another. Do we know of any studies that includes the switching from a native language to a western language. For example Te Reo Maori - English or Navajo to English?

Regards

Luis

For different languages (alphabetic vs non alphabetic or spoken vs written languages), we need to check this book : Multidiscilpinary approaches to code switching

http://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/sibil.41/main

Thanks Jean-Marc. Appreciate it.

Many years ago when reviewing V/P differences on the Wechsler IQ tests, I tried, but failed, to find any decent evidence for the IQs of bilinguals. Is nor lini kamarul aizan's study (above) from 1929 really the last word on this subject, and does anyone believe the result? I find it baffling that there is not more data on the subject. If definitive reseach were to show that V and P IQs are indeed similar in bilinguals and monolinguals, then one might understand why the topic has been neglected, but any difference either way would surely be really interesting.

Hi Anthony,

I am not specifically looking for advantages in IQ (although that would be one benefit). I am looking for cultural / societal benefits.

I am finding it extremely hard to find anything on the subject that refers specifically to native - western bilingual benefits. Coming from New Zealand I have a 'hunch' (not very scientific I know) that if you were bilingual in Te Reo Maori / English your cultural capital would increase and therefore there may be a decrease in anti Maori encoding across media / population over time.

Studies around the world for Inuit / English, Navajo / English or Te Reo / English are non existent.

Studies for Western / Western are numerous.

I am working through a research proposal at the moment which will be looking at this very gap.

Regards

Luis

Bilinguals are said to be more flexible-minded :)

There are loads of articles on this topic. L3 learning and teaching particularly demonstrate these results recently in published articles I have reviewed.

I would say that moving into German language as a 20 year old in an immersion process (from native language--American English) I came to perceive that I understood the power of "querdenken" (thinking tangentially) enveloping my thought processes and "Weltanshaung".

Mark Twain a long ago jokingly wrote that "that awful German language" through its structural differences from English gave him a greater "sense of perspective" when he used the language or even read it. I would have to agree that the addition of that L2 and later an L3 in Spanish have added perspective.

Luis, while you may not be looking for IQ differences, any that are found are highly relevant. Whilst in the library yesterday, I spotted a complete run of the British J Educational Psychology, so had a look as there is often valuable data in these old jounals, and you always get a different slant on perennial topics. The article from 1938;8:63 is highly relevant. In Welsh mining areas, non-verbal IQs in bilingual schools were comparable to those in monoglot schools, but verbal IQs were lower in bilingual schools. I cannot see any defect in this conclusion, and it confirms previous similar studies. I find this rather surprising, but the onus is now on those who assert that bilingualism has any linguistic benefit to produce some favourable IQ data.

Recall what Stephen Jay Gould (and others) have written about in his classic. THE MISMEASUREMENT OF MAN. Most of these IQ tests over the past century are garbage and filled with bias in design and definitions. I would say that you should avoid IQ tests as a single measure--but only amongst a group of measures.

I once heard an evolutionary biologist even more distinguished than S J Gould describe him as a charlatan, and that was not in reference to his IQ book. Why should one take any notice of a non-specialist with an obvious axe to grind in preference to 100 years of research by experts in psychometrics? If you have a point about IQ tests, at least quote something from the peer-reviewed specialist literature. And in any case, I don't see what relevance Gould's book has to testing IQ in Welsh schools in the 1930's.

It's because we have read the book. When someone takes time to go through data sets that have not been questioned nor reviewed in 40 to 200 years, we should take time to listen to what he says. Such work is seldom done in the modern sciences. It is done by historians, but that does not mean we should ignore it. Gould's book is a classic--that means it needs to be read and discussed--and critiqued by readers engaged in teaching methodologies--whether in social sciences or natural sciences.

In short,Gould's work--as interdisciplinary as it is--has made itself a well-cited classic because of the betterment to scientific discourse the two main points of his book raise about methodology and presumption of science.

By the way, it is a good or fast read--except for a few chapters. Instead of taking on a 3rd person's opinion, I always recommend your read a chapter or two before condemning another man's research and argumentation.

In working on my PhD, I had good methods classes and Gould's methodology of going over classic data sets and reviewing for unintended and intended biases is appropriate. This review below explains a bit more about: The Mismeasure of Man, i.e. for those who have not heard of it.

Sean DeLauder wrote:

Before a proper summation can be given, one first has to understand the Why of The Mismeasure of Man. The Why being hundreds of years of conservative, white-folk-do-well-because-they're-smartest ideology supported by "science", and the more recent belief in the existence of an inherited IQ number by which all humans can be ranked, culminating in The Bell Curve, by Herrnstein and Murray (1994). It is a book that asserts poor people are, in short, intellectually inferior to the non-poor, and thus can never rise above their status (barring some fluke) to achieve the success that wealthier people enjoy.

The book was roundly criticized as sloppy, statistically inaccurate, and pandering to a conservative audience that wanted to believe the poor were not worth the money spent on them, with Gould as one of its loudest critics.

In sum, Gould's book is a admonishment of The Bell Curve and the willingness of social scientists to shape their findings to fit their narrative over the past centuries of anthropological research. In essence, they found what they set out to find (support for white, Europeans being more intelligent than others), in spite of clear evidence to the contrary--thus the title of the book. He debunks the methodologies and findings of ideas such as: mental capacity is determined by cranial volume, and how those who used these methods tried to fit their beliefs to their findings and preserve the idea that Wealthy White People have earned their status because they are more intelligent (this became a problem when some African skulls, and even some female skulls *gasp!*, had greater volume than their caucasian counterparts), as well as the notion of a measurable IQ. For those with a mathematical bent, the latter portion of the book explains the error of Herrnstein and Murray's calculations, and the continuing trend of partiality toward specific data that proved their hypothesis while ignoring data that might disprove it.

The latter part of this trend is what Gould finds disheartening and enraging at the same time. It is symptomatic of Bad Science. That being when scientists find an abundance of evidence that points in a different direction from what they expected, yet cling to their preconceived expectations anyway, and search for a way to manipulate their data to confirm the existing bias. Imagine if Newton had at first insisted his laws of motion were based upon the energy inherent in apples, and never allowed his findings to alter his opinion. In the far future these notions of gender- and race-based intellectuality will be long behind us and we will look back in incredulity. But if not for Gould, this book, and others like him, we might never take those steps forward.

If you take anything from the book, or at least the idea of the book if you choose not to read it in its entirety, it should be 1) always approach an idea with some degree of skepticism, and 2) consider the possibility of an agenda behind a proposal--even when offered by something so noble and ideal as the scientific community.

Back to 3rd languages--I recommend you start here for a state of the arts article

http://www.unil.ch/webdav/site/magicc/shared/Ressources/Jessner_2008_Teaching_third_languages.pdf

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but facts should be sacred in any scientific discourse. I counted 6 factual errors or misstatements in the two latest posts on IQ testing. Rather than go through these in detail, perhaps Kevin can select just one key alleged fact about IQ from Gould's book that is backed up by reference to a primary source in a specialist journal. If indeed he can do so, he needs also to show it has not been cherry-picked if it is not a consensus opinion. Experts can be wrong, but prima facie are more likely to be correct than outsiders with an obvious agenda who rely on second and third hand sources.

I was hesitant to report above a private conversation very unfavourable to SJG, but I have just checked Gould out on Wikipedia, and was amazed to find that a second person had described SJG by the very same word, charlatan, this time in reference to his IQ work. Gould's IQ book is the best example I know of how one selects (pseudo)facts to fit into a preconceived narrative.

Many, many benefit! I am trilingual from childhood! Serbo-Croatish, Hungarian and German. Plus two languages - English and Esperanto, later in adolescency.

This article is very interesting.

Bialystok, E., Craik, F.I.M., Freedman, M.,

"Bilingualism as a protection against the onset of symptoms of Dementia".

Neuropsychologia 2007; 45: 459- 464.

Best wishes.

Thanks everyone for your in put. All will be taken on board and looked through. Thanks agian.

It is true. I agree.

This is in response to Anthony.

The two main foci of the Gould book (1981) are : (1) "Sciences potential as an instrument for identifying the cultural constraints upon it cannot be fully realized until scientists give up the twin myths of [full] objectivity and inexorable march toward truth." [p. 23]

In other words, science cannot fully escape its dialectic.

(2) "[F]actual reality exists and that science though often in an obtuse manner, can learn about it."[p.22]

In short, the focus of IQ and intelligence used in the book are just two of many examples--the reviewer who was quoted above was just that--a reviewer of book with his own spin.

I have, in contrast, reviewed the book as a book which one would use in a graduate methods course to help students to think through the issues Gould has raised.

There is another research from the year of 1929, showed that the monolinguals consistently outperformed the bilinguals in IQ test performances....

The validity of IQ tests is controversial today too, but in 1929.....!??

In response to Nikola, all of the research of the past 3 to 4 decades have debunked the older research, i.e. based on bad presumptions about those being tested, how the variables were designed etc. Research on multilingual research and education today find no support for the earlier findings.

In short, studies involving children of migratory workers (working in mines etc.) were for example, misused by society back in the 1920 through 1940s to promote nationalization and immigration policies around the world.

Such studies e.g. compared monolingual kids who had parents who were educated in the English schools system to migratory worker kids--with little to no explanation as to how culture, race and class played in the results.

Thank You very much!

The main and very good use for Gould's book in a teaching course should be for students to read his primary sources and check whether Gould has reported these fairly and accurately. And what single key fact about IQ did Gould flag up that we all need to address? I am quite prepared to believe that bilinguals have better linguistic development, and hence higher verbal IQs, but where is the modern evidence for this? Since when have politicians or society taken the slightest notice of psychologists' findings? It is a very depressing and reductionist view of mankind that culture maketh man, rather than man maketh culture.

I agree with you Anthony!

I am not really sure what IQ tests are good for while I am quite sure as to what multilingualism is good for.

In relation to some other responses, there is an important relationship between legitimacy of the languages in question. For instance, if a child of Arabic-speaking immigrants goes to a Dutch school (since I live in the Netherlands I am using this example) it is highly likely that he or she will be discouraged from persisting with speaking Arabic at home as multilingualism generally has bad press for those reasons listed initially (slower acquisition of vocabulary etc.). There is also a stigma attached to being an immigrant so that does not help. The children from such backgrounds certainly face higher obstacles to achieving academic success because their Dutch may be subjectively and/or objectively lagging behind their peers' language. However, I believe that in some schools in the Netherlands (and I don't know if there are any left after budget cuts) Arabic and/or Turkish were introduced as school subjects for those children who already spoke it at home. This had beneficial effects on the academic progress overall, including in Dutch. From other practical examples of training I have seen I am quite convinced that acquiring additional or more formal language skills in one language has direct influence on the progress in the second and third language. Moreover, in the example of those schools the fact that the 'immigrant' languages were given the status of school subjects gave legitimacy to those languages as 'real' and not languages 'just' spoken at home.

It seems to me that research in multilingualism tends to be snapshot or fixed while multilingualism changes throughout a person's life. There are times when one language rules more than others and then that changes too. For real research one would have to follow multilinguals throughout their lives. As expressed elsewhere, this is hard to do since one lacks comparable material. Or as Tolstoy may have put it, all monolinguals are similar while all multilinguals are multilingual in their own way.

Anthony, with regard to your question about evidence of verbal intelligence, please note the following:

Sampath (2005), for example, examined bilingualism and intelligence among monocultural Indian children. All of the 10-year-old participants spoke either Telugu or Kannada as their first language. They were administered the Wechsler Intelligence test for children, and half then began schooling in Tamil. Four years later, the children were again tested. The results showed that there were no differences between the monolingual and the bilingual groups with respect to global intelligence or global nonverbal intelligence. But there was a significant difference with respect to verbal intelligence, with the bilingual participants outperforming the monolingual participants. Kuo and Anderson (2012) conducted a similar study among Taiwanese children and also found that bilinguals outperformed monolinguals with respect to verbal intelligence.

Dear Mr Williams, I wonder whether there is a difference in visual intelligence of Asian people who learn European languages, because these people are well know to learn there letters as pictures. Do you know any studies in this field?

Richard Lynn has extensively reviewed national IQ differences. East Asians score highly on non-verbal or visuospatial IQ, less well on verbal IQ, whether they are tested in their own country or as immigrants to another. The reason for this difference is obscure, but it is consistent with the reported difficulty the Japanese have with learning foreign languages, and with the success of the Chinese economy. Auditory and not visual skills are important in learning languages.

Thanks, James, for the references. These results sound plausible, but since they contradict previous studies, I will try to get them and read them carefully to see if they do indeed do what it says on the tin.

Addendum: I could not find any paper on Google Scholar by Kuo & Anderson on IQ .

Sampath (2005) was a conference report which has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal. I am not surprised, as it was almost impossible to understand.

What does surprise me, is how little good-quality research there has been on bilingualism and IQ.

Anthony,

Most of the direct investigations of intelligence and bilingualism are decades old. Here's a link to Kenji Hakuta's annotated bibliography of some of those studies:

http://www.stanford.edu/~hakuta/Publications/(1989)%20-%20BILINGUALISM%20AND%20INTELLIGENCE%20TESTING%20AN%20ANNOTATED%20.pdf

All of the more recent studies that I'm familiar with take an indirect approach to studying the effects of bilingualism, looking most often at cognitive processing. Here are a couple of links:

Bialystok--http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/cep-65-4-229.pdf

Joy & Mann--http://ijb.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/01/16/1367006912472263.abstract

I agree with you that the quality of research on bilingualism and intelligence tends to be lower than what we should expect. I would suggest that there are three primary reasons. First, many people working in bilingualism are not trained in social science, which results in certain challenges associated with research design. Second, bilingualism is, in the US at any rate, a political issue, not a pedagogical one. Consequently, much of the research on this topic is driven by political and ideological forces that shape research methods and designs. And third, IQ testing, again in the US at any rate, is also influenced by political and ideological factors that have made it difficult to publish studies investigating intelligence and bilingualism.

I am not certain that the idea of bilingualism (and multilingualism) in education and research can cleanly divide the concept into either political or pedagogical ones--regardless as to whether one is in the USA or not. For example, many Hindi and Urdu dialects and other dialects around the globe are much more extreme in terms of grammar to the related "language" than are clearly defined languages, such as Danish and German from one another.

In short, language is political period--as it is social and psychological--any where.

Otherwise I agree with James Williams other points.

A new study finds becoming bilingual may delay the onset of three types of dementia.

http://m.mysuncoast.com/mobile/health/news/dementia-may-be-delayed-if-you-are-bilingual-a-new/article_fe04c278-46fa-11e3-acab-001a4bcf6878.html#.UnptT2uqLDk.facebook

"A new study finds becoming bilingual may delay the onset of three types of dementia"

This has just been reported in Neurology, which I have not yet read, but have read summaries. No control for differing intelligence levels of the different groups seems to have been made (though the effect seems unrelated to education). The effect was seen for 3 different types of dementia, so I think the simplest and most likely explanation is that the more generally able the person, the more cognitive resources they have to compensate for or stave off any disease, so I would expect the same effect for say Parkinson's disease.

"The article from 1938;8:63 is highly relevant. In Welsh mining areas, non-verbal IQs in bilingual schools were comparable to those in monoglot schools, but verbal IQs were lower in bilingual schools. I cannot see any defect in this conclusion, and it confirms previous similar studies. I find this rather surprising, but the onus is now on those who assert that bilingualism has any linguistic benefit to produce some favourable IQ data."

At long last, a definitive study, from Scotland:

Does bilingualism influence cognitive aging

Thomas H. Bak MD....Ian J. Deary MD

First published: May 2014 Full publication history DOI: 10.1002/ana.24158C

Abstract

Recent evidence suggests a positive impact of bilingualism on cognition, including later onset of dementia. However, monolinguals and bilinguals might have different baseline cognitive ability. We present the first study examining the effect of bilingualism on later-life cognition controlling for childhood intelligence. We studied 853 participants, first tested in 1947 (age = 11 years), and retested in 2008–2010. Bilinguals performed significantly better than predicted from their baseline cognitive abilities, with strongest effects on general intelligence and reading. Our results suggest a positive effect of bilingualism on later-life cognition, including in those who acquired their second language in adulthood. Ann Neurol 2014

''ncluding in those who acquired their second language in adulthood''

Well done!

Great article! Thanks

In reference to Gordon's piece it is often shown that with a few years of positive multilingual or bilingual education, students do better on both science and math scores than monolingual students in the same city going to monolingual schools.

This was the case in the 1990s when I studied the Kansas City Missouri's immersion schools for elementary schools--comparing and contrasting the three (Spanish, French, and German) elementary schools to many of the other schools in the district .

Brain plasticity sugest that bilionguilism and better multilinguslim does not create compartemntailsation or the idea of separate systems. The brain tend to expand rather than compartmetalise and be divided on itself. Actually monolinguilism does not exist-we all speak differently according to context ,region, social class and even ideology. Bakhtin describes this fact and calls it hetroglossia. A naive speaker of English will understand a british speaker for example though the two languages ar different-at least morphonologically. A person who speaks BEV will definitely be able to understand the standard variety used by politicians etc..What we call languages are sometiomes mutually intelligible but politically separate. Think about Spanish and Italian , Hebrew and Arabic, German and dutch etc..

However, one must admit that true bilinguilism occurs between languages of differnt families such as French and English, Hebrew and German etc..Seen from this perspective, one must admit that these languages clearly embody a different view of life and things.It follows therefore that unless we put this simple fact into consideration it is almost unscientific to accurately measure the scope of bilinguilism on cognition.

The fact that some languages--e.g., Japanese and English--differ structually does NOT lead to the conclusion that they embody "a different view of life and things."  I have worked with a large number of bilingual students over the years, and I have been unable to detect any such large-scale differences.  

James

I did not mean a large scale difference-i might have misrepresented my thoughts. You are definitely right-there are only nuances.What I wanted to say is that these nuances are easier to detect within  languages that does not belong to the same family and consequently researchers has to consider this fact before rushing to publish their works on the effects of bilinguilism over cognition.

Brahim,

Yes, thanks for the clarification.  How we use language does differ by culture, and the nuances are interesting.  Japanese, for example, tends to be much less direct than English, perhaps because in Japan directness is considered to be rude.  I recall an incident at a Japanese company in which a mid-level manager was being considered for promotion; his co-workers were interviewed to get their views on his performance.  The general opinion was "Yoshi is a good worker."  Well, Yoshi did not get the promotion, for this comment was understood to be a harsh criticism.

James

Interesting!  a simple question kept bothering me: how on earth Japanese know which is which? Is good not good enough in japan and you have to be excellent. Or bad means good and good means bad etc..

One thing is certain-once a foreigner decodes the cultural code he/she is able to communicate perfectly well. But I must admit there are moments of schyzophrenia entailed.

Brahim,

The nuances of Japanese culture are difficult for an American to understand.  Decorum would not allow the co-workers to say that Yoshi was an excellent worker, for excessive praise is frowned upon.  An acceptable response might have been "Yoshi has enabled us to work effectively as a team."

James,

Excessive praise is frowned upon whereas concrete description of somebody's deeds may be highly positive. Very interesting-thank you for pointing this out.

:)

I haven't done any research in this field (I'm just following it for personal curiosity), but speaking as a bilingual myself (who has learned additional languages), I think it can only help and I can't imagine any cognitive disadvantages. The only problem I experience at times is finding a certain word in my first language after having spoken my second language for a few month, or occasionally grammar. But these language specific problems subside after a few days of first language only exposure!

" speaking as a bilingual myself (who has learned additional languages), I think it can only help and I can't imagine any cognitive disadvantages. "

Any disavantages would apply to a child learning its primary language.  This is hard enough in the first place, and it is plausible that trying to learn two languages simultaneously would confuse the infant and delay language development.  Teachers have often banned children from using alternative languages (eg sign language in Deaf schools, Welsh in schools in Wales) on the view that this interferes with the usage of the dominant classroom language.  On the other hand,  mastery of two languages should improve cognitive complexity.  Distinguishing between these competing hypotheses can only be done with empirical data, of which there is surprisingly little.

Here is a rare example of helpful data ; Cheuk et al Multilingual home environment and specific language impairment: a case-control study in Chinese children Paed Perinat Epidemiol 2005;19;303;

• Language development was unrelated to social class or multilingual exposure for normal children
• The more languages in the home, the more likely there was specific language impairment.

Several reports have suggested that multilingualism has a protective effect against semantic dementia. Here, we provide further evidence for this effect. The patient was a 75-year-old right-handed Taiwanese woman who had retired after working as a tailor. She was able to speak Taiwanese, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese fluently until 5 years ago. She gradually developed symptoms of profound anomia and difficulty with word-finding. Her mother tongue was Taiwanese and she had learned Japanese as her first symbolized language. She had used Mandarin Chinese for most of her life, but depended on Japanese to read and write (such as reading a newspaper and keeping accounts). However, she could now speak only very simple Taiwanese and Japanese, and could recognize only simple Japanese characters. SECOND: The patient was a 62-year-old right-handed man who had worked as an ironworker. He could speak Taiwanese and Mandarin Chinese fluently until 5 years ago. His mother tongue was Taiwanese. After 5 years of language deterioration, he was unable to communicate with his family members or recognize any characters, including numbers. SPECT RESULTS: Brain perfusion ECD SPECT (Tc-99m-ethyl cysteinate dimer single-photon emission computed tomography) showed less perfusion in the multilingual patient (Case #1) than in the bilingual patient (Case #2). Neuropsychological tests also demonstrated a slower rate of degeneration in the multilingual patient. We speculate that reading and writing in Japanese had a greater impact on the semantic system in Case #1. Thus, this patient showed relatively less degeneration or functional inactivity, as shown by perfusion in the frontal lobe, and this might be due to the persistent activation involved in multilingualism.