It turns out that bilingualism has its disadvantages

The ability to talk and think in two languages gives great advantages. This allows people to find work in another country, freely communicate with representatives of other cultures during the trip, study foreign press.

A common phenomenon

In fact, bilingualism is a very common phenomenon. According to current estimates of experts, more than half of the world's population are bilingual. And this trend is only increasing. Psychologists have suggested that bilingualism contributes to the improvement of mental skills. This popular theory is almost a hundred years old. Studies conducted during the last three decades have demonstrated the clear advantages of bilingualism in "brain training", as well as in the use of non-verbal abilities. So, for example, bilingual people are used to filtering unnecessary information. It is generally believed that they focus their attention only on the main things.

Other advantages of bilingualism

Bilingualism is a different age that does not depend on culture. It has been proven that bilingual people perform cognitive tasks faster and more accurately. In addition, there is a strong suggestion that bilingualism postpones the onset of symptoms associated with dementia for several years.

Skepticism in the scientific community

However, the scientific community has recently become increasingly skeptical about the previous hypothesis, which extols the advantages of bilingualism. The stumbling block was the absence of obvious differences between people when it comes to executive functions. Opponents of the presented theory do not see any cognitive advantages of bilingualism.

A turning point in the study of bilingualism

Currently, research on this issue is at a critical juncture. To identify the advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism, it is necessary to adopt a completely new approach. Only so, going beyond specific examples, scientists will be able to understand how the bilingual mind works. However, even now we have the opportunity to clarify some issues.

A group of scientists tried to solve the problem by identifying differences in how a particular group of people can evaluate their own work. This ability in scientific circles is called meta-knowledge. Previously, it was assumed that this gave bilingual advantages in the areas adjacent to metacognition. Probably, you will be surprised, but the tests showed an obvious ignorance of bilinguals about their real performance. Their monolingual opponents have coped much better with the proposed tests.

Test for cognitive benefits

After the first failure of bilingual citizens, scientists had to identify how bilinguals reflect the benefits of cognitive abilities. To do this, scientists evaluated the metacognitive processing of information in groups of bilingual and monolingual young people. Metacognition is the ability to evaluate one's own cognitive work or the ability to "superimpose" thoughts on top of thoughts. This skill is important in the professional sphere, when people make decisions, but the result of their actions is not immediately apparent (for example, in business).

When an entrepreneur evaluates the work of his company, he takes into account a variety of factors. In the event that a person is confident in their results and ideas, he decides to continue investments or expand the business. If the evaluation of current results leaves much to be desired, the manager looks for new ideas, options for retreat or decides to freeze the business.

Simple tasks

In this test, the participants were offered the simplest situations. Volunteers watched two circles on the screen of the monitor and the guess was to guess, in which they contain more points. Sometimes the difference in quantity was obvious, so the decisions were made easily. However, in the event that the numerical discrepancy was insignificant (for example, 49 and 50 points), the participants gave answers after some hesitation and were less confident than before.

Conclusions of the experiment

It turned out that bilinguals and monolingual people were equally inclined to choose the circle containing the largest number of points. However, people who know one language, better evaluated their results (understand where they could be right, and where not). And this means that bilinguals have a worse idea of their own productivity. So scientists were convinced that bilingualism gives both advantages and disadvantages.

How to improve the understanding of a bilingual mind?

Currently, in cooperation with the University of Engliya Raskin, a three-year project is under way to improve understanding of bilingualism. Some evidence of cognitive advantages has already been published. For example, bilinguals can better filter out verbal interference and have higher visual attention. But, as we have seen, these people have a certain lack of metacognition. Very soon, scientists hope to get a whole picture.