Bilingualism makes the mind sharper (and helps forestall Alzheimer's)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/science/31conversation.html

by Jun8 • 15 years ago

37 35 15 years ago

Jun84• 15 years ago

Interesting:

"We asked all the children if a certain illogical sentence was grammatically correct: “Apples grow on noses.” The monolingual children couldn’t answer. They’d say, “That’s silly” and they’d stall. But the bilingual children would say, in their own words, “It’s silly, but it’s grammatically correct.” The bilinguals, we found, manifested a cognitive system with the ability to attend to important information and ignore the less important."

wccrawford3• 15 years ago

Especially since I don't think we were taught grammar until we were 8-10, where I'm from. At that age, I couldn't have possibly answered that question because I wouldn't know what grammar is.

I suspect that they didn't use the word grammar, but somehow got around it, asking if the sentence was correctly formed or something.

Of course, it's also possible that having parents teach you 2 languages practically forces them to teach about grammar early on, so they had an unfair advantage.

ma2rten3• 15 years ago

Generally parents don't teach their children about grammar when they bring them up bilingually. One parent just talks in one language to the child and the other parent in the other language. At least that was the case for me.

But I can very well image, that you gain a better understanding of grammar, when you speak two languages, almost by definition. This trick is also used in Natural Language Processing to improve part-of-speech tagging.

algorias• 15 years ago

I can attest to that. When I was 9, we moved to another country and I had to learn Spanish from scratch. A year or so later, I still couldn't speak without an accent and still had a small vocabulary, but I vastly outperformed most of my classmates in orthography and grammar.

T-R3• 15 years ago

One thing I've noticed as I've learned other languages is that I've become very keenly aware of, for example, all of the different definitions/parts of speech of the word "that" (each translates differently and takes different parts of speech as its object), and consequently how I structure my sentences.

Of course, part of that could also be a result of my tendency to think about grammatical correctness in terms of type systems.

ma2rten3• 15 years ago

Funny, because English is not my native language, but I would have no idea what the different meanings of 'that' would be.

Jun84• 15 years ago

Interesting point. I read that somewhere that the usage of the in English is also a sore point for learners, and that even native speakers take 7-8 years to master its correct usage. When I read papers from non-native but fluent speakers, this is generally what gives them away.

ignifero2• 15 years ago

I suspect it's because you don't really learn what grammar or syntax is until you have to (i.e. until you learn a second language). For the same reason, you don't know what is "incorrect syntax", since people rarely make syntactical errors after childhood.

ignifero2• 15 years ago

One of the peculiar things about language acquisition is that children learn it much better than one would expect. It's the "Poverty of the stimulus" paradox that led Chomsky to assert innate capacity to process grammar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_of_the_stimulus

kragen• 15 years ago

(obligatory correlation does not imply causation comment)

The authors did go to some effort to rule out other causes of correlation, though: "The effect does not appear to be attributable to such possible confounding factors as education, occupational status, or immigration. Bilingualism thus appears to contribute to cognitive reserve, which acts to compensate for the effects of accumulated neuropathology."

bmohlenhoff• 15 years ago

So do you think that "speaking" multiple computer languages counts the same as speaking multiple spoken languages, in terms of mental fitness and the other benefits outlined by this study? Obviously something like C++ isn't as complicated as something like Japanese, but still I wonder if programming-related skills like the ability to work concurrently at multiple levels of abstraction also prevent cognitive decline.

wccrawford3• 15 years ago

When you're programming in Ruby, do you mentally shift into Ruby mode, or do you translate everything from English into Ruby?

Bilinguals don't translate from 1 language to another, they actually think in that language while using it, to the point that you can actually see attitude changes based on which language they are using.

I know I don't think in code, but rather translate it from English into whatever programming language I'm using.

lemming2• 15 years ago

I know I don't think in code, but rather translate it from English into whatever programming language I'm using.

Really? I think the only time I do this is when something is sufficiently tricky that I probably have to draw it to work out what it should be doing ("Ok, so I pass this in here, and then it could flow through to here or here..."). Otherwise, assuming I'm sufficiently fluent in the language I'm programming in it just "flows" out, as when I'm speaking in Spanish (a second language I speak well) - there's no intermediate translation from English in either case.

binarycheese• 15 years ago

For the most part, I usually think in pseudo-code

frooxie• 15 years ago

"Bilinguals /.../ actually think in that language while using it"

I don't. I usually don't think in language at all. Both speaking my native language and programming require translation from the abstract symbols and feelings that my actual thinking consists of.

true_religion• 15 years ago

I think in code. I used to think in C because it was the first language I truly immersed myself in.

Now aday with object oriented languages, I find myself thinking in Smalltalk first then translating the concepts to the given language.

hzay2• 15 years ago

"Bilinguals don't translate from 1 language to another... based on which language they are using."

Absolutely agree! I keep telling my friends (who are forever translating between English and their native tongues) and my father (who is a professional translator) that it is not always possible to translate accurately because languages are deeply rooted in the culture/habits of the people who use them.

I'm bilingual and I find that sentences spring to my mind in the language that I've been using in the last week. I speak my native tongue in my parents' home and English everywhere else. I stay for a week in my parents' home once every four months.

However, sentences do not always spring to my mind. I think more in images and senses than in language.

lemming2• 15 years ago

...I wonder if programming-related skills like the ability to work concurrently at multiple levels of abstraction also prevent cognitive decline.

Almost certainly. I don't have a reference but I remember reading an article about a couple who were both neurologists. They were both in their 60s IIRC, and they each took on a new arbitrary hobby each year to exercise their brains. It could be anything, as long as it required a non-trivial amount of concentration and mental effort. I'll see if I can dig the article up, it was really interesting.

simias• 15 years ago

As someone whose native language is not english and is actively learning russian, I do experience the same kind of feelings when having to deal with both natural and programing languages.

When writing C, I don't feel like I'm "translating English into C" as somebody else said, rather I "think" in C: in pointers, in functions, in arrays, in structs... Likewise right now I'm not translating my native language into English, I just think and write in English.

I also experiment the same kind of frustration when I have to write something in a language I don't know well (be it Python or Russian). I don't know the vocabulary, I have to look up everything on the web all the time to find out what's the right way to express something. Some parts of the grammar seem backwards and you try to say things in one language the way you would say them in an other, and it ends up in a complete mess (and often, you blame the language, see that "C is better than C++" thread that was on the frontpage earlier).

That being said, it's pretty obvious that learning a programming language (even something as big as C++) is orders of magnitude simpler than learning a foreign language, so I would not say that knowing Python and Prolog is nearly comparable (or as big an achievement) to knowing Japanese and Arabic. On the other hand, we use programing languages to solve complex problems that always require some mental effort when speaking a language becomes completely natural once you're sufficiently fluent, so I suppose both may be beneficial to the brain in the long term.

stygianguest• 15 years ago

If it forestalls Alzheimer's there should be significantly more of it in the exceptionally monolingual Anglophone world compared to the rest of us. Can't find any evidence in that direction, other factors such as longlivity and simple genetics probably interfere too much.

Apocryphon• 15 years ago

What about trilingual or quadlingual people?

nebaneba2• 15 years ago

As mental exercise, it's certainly helpful, but the marginal benefit is probably lower than going from monolingual to bilingual.

The second language is crucial because it provides basis for comparison. If all you've ever used is Internet Explorer, that's the entirety of your internet experience. But if you've tried just another browser, you learn to appreciate the difference.

rmc2• 15 years ago

I would assume that they are rare enough to make study easy.

Bilingualism makes the mind sharper (and helps forestall Alzheimer's)

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