Is it worth it to learn a second language for the cognitive benefits? I’ve seen a few puff pieces about how a second language can help your brain, but how solid is the research?
This has come up before on LW and I’ve criticized the idea that English-speakers benefit from learning a second language. It’s hard, a huge time and effort investment, you forget fast without crutches like spaced repetition, the observed returns are minimal, and the cognitive benefits pretty subtle for what may be a lifelong project in reaching native fluency.
Quality observational research is probably very difficult to do since you can’t properly control for indirect cognitive benefits you get from learning a second language and I’d take any results with a grain of salt. You also can’t properly control for confounding factors e.g. reasons for learning a second language. I think you’d need experimental research with randomization to several languages and this would be very costly and possibly inethical to set up.
I have without a question gotten a huge boost from learning English since there aren’t enough texts in my native language about psychology, cognitive science and medicine that happen to be my main interests. My native language also lacks the vocabulary to deal with those subjects efficiently. I have also learned several memory techniques and done cognitive tests and training solely because of being fluent in English.
I think you’d need experimental research with randomization to several languages and this would be very costly and possibly inethical to set up.
You just need to have an area where different schools have different curriculums and there a lottery mechanism for deciding which student goes to which school.
That deals with the costs but I doubt consent would be easy to obtain unless the schools are very uniform in quality/status and people don’t have preferences about which languages to learn, hence the possible problem with ethics. Schools have preferences too, quality schools want quality students.
There are multiple ways you can solve the problem of who gets to go to the most desired school. You can do it via tuition fees and let money decide who goes to the best school. You can do tests to have the best students go to the best school. You can also do random assignments.
Neither of those are “better” from an ethical perspective.
If you let money decide or do tests you lose the statistical benefits of randomization. I don’t understand how you see no ethical problem in ignoring preferences or not matching best students with best schools, perhaps I misunderstand you.
I suppose it depends on how different the second language is from your native language. As in, Dutch may not offer a big boost in new ways of framing the world for a native German speaker, for instance, since they’re closely related languages. (This depends on what you mean when you say “cognitive benefits”; I’m assuming here some form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.)
In my case, I have found English especially adaptable (when compared to my native language) when it came to new words (introduced, for example, for reasons of technological advancement—see, for example, every term that relates to computers and programming), since it has very simple inflexions and a verb structure that allows the formation of new, “natural-sounding” phrasal verbs. Having taught my own language to an American through English, I wouldn’t say the same about it expanding your way of conceptualising the world, unless you’re really fond of numerous and often nonsensical inflexions.
I’m not sure I could recommend specific languages that may help in this regard, but I think I could recommend you to study linguistics instead of one specific language, and use that knowledge to help you decide in which one you want to invest your time. I’ve studied little of it, but the discipline seems full of instances where you put the spotlight, so to speak, on specific differences between languages and the way they affect cognition.
Is it worth it to learn a second language for the cognitive benefits? I’ve seen a few puff pieces about how a second language can help your brain, but how solid is the research?
This has come up before on LW and I’ve criticized the idea that English-speakers benefit from learning a second language. It’s hard, a huge time and effort investment, you forget fast without crutches like spaced repetition, the observed returns are minimal, and the cognitive benefits pretty subtle for what may be a lifelong project in reaching native fluency.
Quality observational research is probably very difficult to do since you can’t properly control for indirect cognitive benefits you get from learning a second language and I’d take any results with a grain of salt. You also can’t properly control for confounding factors e.g. reasons for learning a second language. I think you’d need experimental research with randomization to several languages and this would be very costly and possibly inethical to set up.
I have without a question gotten a huge boost from learning English since there aren’t enough texts in my native language about psychology, cognitive science and medicine that happen to be my main interests. My native language also lacks the vocabulary to deal with those subjects efficiently. I have also learned several memory techniques and done cognitive tests and training solely because of being fluent in English.
You just need to have an area where different schools have different curriculums and there a lottery mechanism for deciding which student goes to which school.
That deals with the costs but I doubt consent would be easy to obtain unless the schools are very uniform in quality/status and people don’t have preferences about which languages to learn, hence the possible problem with ethics. Schools have preferences too, quality schools want quality students.
There are multiple ways you can solve the problem of who gets to go to the most desired school. You can do it via tuition fees and let money decide who goes to the best school. You can do tests to have the best students go to the best school. You can also do random assignments.
Neither of those are “better” from an ethical perspective.
If you let money decide or do tests you lose the statistical benefits of randomization. I don’t understand how you see no ethical problem in ignoring preferences or not matching best students with best schools, perhaps I misunderstand you.
Yes of course, you need the randomization.
If you want an equal society that it’s impotant that poor students also get good teachers.
I would expect they have the correlation backwards. Smart people are more likely to find it easy and interesting to learn extra languages.
I suppose it depends on how different the second language is from your native language. As in, Dutch may not offer a big boost in new ways of framing the world for a native German speaker, for instance, since they’re closely related languages. (This depends on what you mean when you say “cognitive benefits”; I’m assuming here some form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.)
In my case, I have found English especially adaptable (when compared to my native language) when it came to new words (introduced, for example, for reasons of technological advancement—see, for example, every term that relates to computers and programming), since it has very simple inflexions and a verb structure that allows the formation of new, “natural-sounding” phrasal verbs. Having taught my own language to an American through English, I wouldn’t say the same about it expanding your way of conceptualising the world, unless you’re really fond of numerous and often nonsensical inflexions.
I’m not sure I could recommend specific languages that may help in this regard, but I think I could recommend you to study linguistics instead of one specific language, and use that knowledge to help you decide in which one you want to invest your time. I’ve studied little of it, but the discipline seems full of instances where you put the spotlight, so to speak, on specific differences between languages and the way they affect cognition.