The more languages we speak, the merrier we all are

Believe it or not, the world is multilingual. It is estimated that at least half of the world’s population, over 3 billion people, use more than one language in everyday life. According to the European Commission, 54 per cent of European citizens are bilingual. Even Britain, considered one of the most “monolingual” countries, is not doing too badly with 39 per cent.

Scientists have only recently started to study humans’ ability to acquire multiple languages. One of the most fascinating questions addressed in this research is how our brain deals with having two or more languages, and what are the implications for cognitive development.

There is a general consensus that being able to communicate in more than one language has positive effects on our children’s brain development and that it is never too late to learn a second one: using two languages may protect the brain from cognitive decline in older age.

I read with interest an article published in the Telegraph in response to an academic study that showed a possible advantage of only speaking one language. And here’s where I declare an interest: I was one of the “boffins” responsible for that research.

I was born and raised in Italy, so I’m bilingual myself. And, as it happens, so were my fellow researchers (yet more "boffins) at Anglia Ruskin University and Cambridge University. Yes, indeed. Bilinguals reporting a “bilingual disadvantage”. And before you ask, no, we haven't gone mad.

You see, our job is to study how the acquisition of multiple languages affects cognitive development - and we’ve been doing this in the lab for many years. If you were to look at the research we’ve published, you would notice a bit of a theme: in all our previous studies we found that speaking a second language provided some form of benefit.

Almost all of our publications begin with the title “The bilingual advantage of…", since we’re not a very original bunch when it comes to looking for names for our journal papers.

But the findings we released last week, though, were original. Contrary to our expectations, and all our previous findings, we discovered a bilingual disadvantage in a very specific area called metacognitive processing - our ability to monitor our own performance.

Being “metacognitively efficient” is to have an objective understanding of your own performance; one that tallies with your actual success or failure at doing something. The problem occurs when there is a slight mismatch between what you achieved and your assessment of it.

Now, our two rigorously controlled scientific experiments showed that bilinguals are significantly less efficient when it comes to metacognitive processing. But does it mean that they are stupid? Not at all. Does it, by extension, mean that English speaking monolinguals are more intelligent? No, I’m afraid not.

Does it mean that from now on all managers, politicians, doctors and all those who make important decisions should be monolinguals? Absolutely not.

Our study simply shows that bilingual and monolingual young adults may have different cognitive strategies to monitor their own performance, and we aim to find out why. So we’re now conducting a large-scale study to explore how our brain deals with multiple languages. What are the positive effects (many) and also what are the negative effects (some).

Our previous research showing the “bilingual advantage” where visual attention and concentration are concerned might also explain evidence that life-long use of two or more languages can offer protection against cognitive deterioration associated with normal ageing - as well as Alzheimer’s disease and other age-related neurodegenerative conditions.

Not only that but as the author of last week’s article pointed out, speaking a second language opens up a world of possibilities. If as a young Italian, I hadn’t leant English, I wouldn’t be working in this beautiful country, I wouldn’t have met my sweet bilingual wife, and I wouldn’t have had my wonderful bilingual children! Ciao.

Dr Roberto Filippi is Director of the Multilanguage & Cognition Lab at Anglia Ruskin University