Content of the article

Remember how we all thought bilingual children were smarter because they knew two languages? Turns out that’s not true, say researchers at Western University.

Content of the article

J. Bruce Morton and Cassandra Lowe, who work at the school’s Brain and Mind Institute, poked holes in this long-held theory in a recent series of articles, most notably in the journal Psychological Science.

“Despite a quarter of a century of confirmation bias, we have found that there is ultimately no difference in cognitive abilities when comparing bilingual children to those who are unilingual,” Morton said.

This does not mean that bilingualism is not useful, he added.

“Yes, there are advantages to being bilingual when it comes to career opportunities and world travel, but there is no evidence that it makes children smarter, in the traditional sense,” he said. he declared.

The discovery came after Morton, a Western neuroscientist, reviewed 25 years of research articles.

Content of the article

What he found was that “after correcting for publication bias, the effect of bilingual linguistic status on children’s executive function fell to zero.”

Morton’s Antithesis focuses on an article published in a 1999 issue of the journal Child Development that was hugely influential, having been cited in other research more than 1,100 times.

This document asserted that bilingual children had an advantage over children who spoke only one language. It was based on evidence that bilingual Chinese-English preschoolers scored higher than unilingual preschoolers when their attention was measured.

“The problem with this evidence is that it is well known that East Asian preschoolers outperform North American preschoolers on attention tests,” Morton said. “And if you look at the 1999 study, it is obvious that linguistic status and country of origin are perfectly confused.”

Content of the article

Morton’s research partners for this work are at Yonsei University of Korea and Brandeis University in Massachusetts.

They found flaws in the 1999 study by comparing bilingual East Asian children with monolingual East Asian children, finding that speakers of only one Asian language East performed as well as the bilinguals, with both groups having an advantage over the English monolinguals.

“Unfortunately, what we see as fundamental evidence to support the bilingual advantage in children is gravely flawed,” Morton said. “If we look at the picture as a whole, it is clear that the bilingual language status has no effect on children’s attention.

[email protected]

Twitter.com/DanatLFPress