{"id":4422,"date":"2019-03-30T08:00:24","date_gmt":"2019-03-30T13:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=4422"},"modified":"2019-03-26T13:19:28","modified_gmt":"2019-03-26T18:19:28","slug":"the-debate-continues-being-bilingual-doesnt-improve-executive-function","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/the-debate-continues-being-bilingual-doesnt-improve-executive-function\/","title":{"rendered":"The Debate Continues: Being Bilingual Doesn’t Improve Executive Function"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being bilingual, of course, offers lots of advantages. You can speak with more people, and — depending on potential cultural differences — gain valuable additional perspectives.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For a long time, researchers have wanted to know: does being bilingual offer additional cognitive benefits<\/em>? Can it, in a meaningful way, help us think differently<\/em>, and think better<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Some researchers — including my grad-school professor Gigi Luk — have argued that it increases cognitive control<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This possibility has been studied, for instance, with immigrants who learn a second language in Head Start<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, this claim has long provoked controversy.<\/p>\n

In this recent study<\/a>, using highly sophisticated statistical procedures, researchers found that being bilingual did not improve executive function for Turkish immigrants to Germany.<\/p>\n

What Should Teachers Do?<\/h2>\n

I have, over the years, seen studies on this topic go back and forth.<\/p>\n

For instance, the Head Start research cited above seems quite persuasive. In that study, all students increased self-control during their Head Start year; after all, they were getting older.<\/p>\n

Crucially, the students who also became bilingual showed greater increases in self-control<\/strong>. The likely explanation? The cognitive control required to be bilingual helps with other kinds of self-control as well.<\/p>\n

And yet, as seen in the study of Turkish immigrants, that conclusion just might not be plausible.<\/p>\n

So, my suggestions:<\/p>\n

First<\/strong>: if your school currently makes strong claims about the executive-function benefits of bilingualism, you should think strongly about acknowledging the controversy in this field. That claim does have support. It also faces lots of strong counter-evidence.<\/p>\n

Second<\/strong>: use this study as a reminder to seek out contradictory findings <\/em>before you make changes to your classroom.<\/p>\n

That is: if you hear persuasive research about topic X, be sure to look for anti-X research before you start X-ing.<\/p>\n

Third<\/strong>: somewhat glumly, I wonder if this question ever can be answered finally and persuasively. The category “executive function” is alarmingly nebulous. And, the reasons that people become bilingual vary dramatically.<\/p>\n

Given so many kinds of variety, I increasingly doubt we’ll be sure of an answer here.<\/p>\n

With that point in mind, I think we should highlight this important point: learning a second language has value\u00a0even if doing so doesn’t produce additional executive function benefits<\/em>.<\/p>\n

When we learn new languages, we create new opportunities to meet and connect with a world full of people. That benefit alone makes all that hard work worth while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adding to a complex research history, a new study finds that being bilingual did not increase executive function. Given the complexity of this question, perhaps we should focus on the obvious benefits of being bilingual: we can meet and talk with more people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[13,67],"class_list":["post-4422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-bilingual-education","tag-executive-function"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4422"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4428,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4422\/revisions\/4428"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}