Study: Speaking Multiple Languages Staves Off Dementia | Hacker News Reader

Study: Speaking Multiple Languages Staves Off Dementia

nautil.us

79 pointsdnetesn37 comments

Remembering previous articles staves off dementia ( Or so I hope) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8472556

HN Hall of Fame comment awards center stage.

"Parlez-vous francais? If you answered yes, then you’re well on your way to enjoying the many benefits of bilingualism."

Umm... wouldn't answering "oui" be a better indication of bilingualism than answering "yes"?

Very good.

Also, as with many other social sciences, p-significance through correlation can be mistaken for causation. What if the real reason is higher income or stronger combination of genetic factors that correlates with multilingualism

Or simply correlation of multilingualism with high education and a relatively long work life using brainwork rather than a short work life of exhausting physical labor and then less mental activity.

Also, need to take into account how Western-centric the study of linguistics and multilingualism is. There are many countries in Africa and Southeast Asia, where people are multilingual in everyday settings. This multilingualism might not include English, just 2 different languages in that country.

It would be good to study the effect multilingualism has in such cases.

Having said that, having learnt 3 languages to the point of fluency I felt very challenged and improved my analytical skills, where you understand how tense/grammar structures differ in the same languages and what effect this has on semantics

Very true, but I don't think it's exactly possible to do a properly controlled study here.

No. As is, it demonstrates that you can understand the question in one language, and respond in another. Bilingual! :)

I don't know about you, but I answer "yes" to a lot of questions I don't understand.

What if you answered "Si!" but you couldn't read the article?

Not sure about the article, but you wouldn't have demonstrated a good mastery of French (the question wasn't in the negative).

No, you would have demonstrated that you understand French and speak Italian. Or nothing of the sort, as this subthread indicates.

On the other hand, answering a question in a different language is a clear sign of dementia :)

The author may be saying tabernac!

Study authors: "We found an association"

Typical bad reporting: "Study finds causation"

It should be obvious on the face of it that in aggregate, multi-lingual people live lives that are significantly different than mono-lingual people.

I'd bet a lot of money that breast cancer rates, for example, are much higher in multi-lingual people. If I'm right, it's not because multi-lingualism causes breast cancer. It's because both breast cancer and multi-lingualism are associated with higher-wealth individuals.

FWIW multilingualism isn’t just for the privileged, by a long shot (though I don’t know what the sample for the study was). Lots of people in third world countries are bi- or multilingual.

"in aggregate"

In the US, at least, bilingualism is likely more prevalent amongst the less well off (ie immigrants).

> It's because both breast cancer and multi-lingualism are associated with higher-wealth individuals.

Could you unpack some of your reckons here.

Okay, let's unpack some of the steps in that...

Breast Cancer is more common among women who defer having children to later in life, or who never have children. In the US, intentionally deferring children is a behavior seen most commonly among professional women. Professional women have greater household income than others. So that's the first unpack: "breast cancer is associated with wealth". This is why the two largest hot-spots of breast cancer in the US are Marin County in California and Long Island in New York.

Again sticking to the US, multi-lingualism is generally seen in two groups.

The first is obvious: immigrants. Immigrants are a mix of lower-income labor from nearby countries[1], and higher-income professionals from across the globe looking to get better-paying jobs or opportunity. So without any evidence to back me up, I'm going to just assert that immigrants are in the middle of the income scale.

The second group of multi-linguals in the US are the rich. Either the college-educated who took language in school or those who travel enough to use another language. Again, in aggregate, the college-educated are on the higher end of the income spectrum. Those who travel, in aggregate, tend to be wealthier with disposable income that they can spend on experiences like travel.

So yeah, there's plenty to argue with in the second part of my thesis ("multi-lingualism is associated with higher-wealth"), but I think it's a pretty good bet.

[1] It's hard to a low-income laborer to get enough money to travel to a country far away

I would like to believe this opinion, because I am able to speak both English and Chinese. 因為我會說英語和中國話，我願意相信這意見。But the best considered opinion, according to a well reported article in The Atlantic earlier this year,[1] is that there is no strong evidence that bilingualism is especially helpful for cognitive function in old age. No problem. 沒問題。

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/02/the-battl...

So basically, you could compare dementia statistics in Belgium or Switzerland (where most people speak more than 2 languages) and the UK or France (where that percentage is significantly lower). Are there any such studies?

Any such studies would be swimming in other correlating factors like genetics, quality of life, education, etc.

Is there something special about language, or does it generalize? Does this boil down to: "do stuff with your brain"? (independent of IQ) I think you need to exercise your brain as well as your body.

I bet playing multiple instruments helps too. That exercises the same parts of your brain as language (nested grammatical structure, timing, pitch, reading).

I would think computer programming (in multiple languages) does too, for that matter.

>I would think computer programming (in multiple languages) does too, for that matter.

CF grammars being much easier require, and thus exercise, much less circuitry :)

The language grammar itself is simple, but I would assume the problems you attempt to solve can require a lot of circuitry?

I often try to learn things in non obvious order. It's a common advice in drumming for instance (don't learn patterns with one limb leading). It has tremendous impact on your mind. I tried bass guitar but it proved so much work I choked.

Programming languages also shed light on your previous knowledge. Learn how to solve in FP, ASM, OOP, Prolog .. I can't disagree with that, too many times I understood one concept after seeing it de- then reconstructed in another paradigm.

Jaron Lanier did VR (90s VR) experiments putting people in video games as imaginary creatures, which had non obvious controls to move in space, it made people very very active mentally, having to remap muscle control, orientation and vision ..

some of the studies linked are have such low n ( ~25) done over short periods of time ( ~ 6 months) . There are so many other factors that might affect the results. I am having hard time trusting these articles.

How do these researchers come up with the hypothesis in the first place; would be interesting to see what other hypothesis they tested and failed.

Probably any sort of mental challenge would stave off dementia, whether the challenge is linguistic, mathematical, verbal, or some other category.

True, but multiple languages don't add "much", more massage, decorate, reinforce the previous knowledge graph I guess. Kinda like learning two paradigms, they reinforce each others.

or maybe if you are "smart" enough to speak several languages you are already ahead of the game.. thus you have more to loose before dementia becomes apparent.

I doubt you need to be that smart to learn a second language. Growing up in Belgium we all started learning our second language at age 10 (some earlier), and a third at age 13. Most people (in Flanders) end up leaving high school speaking Dutch, French and English. Some get German too. It's not always very fluent, but everyone should have basic conversation skills in three languages.

It's a cultural thing more than anything else. Besides children's movies we don't dub anything, we just subtitle. That gives you a lot of exposure to other languages. In theatres movies are even simultaneously subtitled in Dutch and French all over the country, by default.

So considering the amount of people that learn a second language with relative ease, I don't think it has anything to do with being smart or not. You just have to be willing and start young enough.

Wha about multiple computer languages?

Programming languages are fun, perhaps, but they are tools for problem-solving, not self-expression, and they're nowhere near the scope and complexity of natural language.

I doubt they'd have an impact.

Nothing more than a misappropriation of the world "language". Natural and programming languages share little more than the word language between them. Programming interface is probably a better description than programming language given the constant conflation of the two.

I certainly know of several firsthand counterexamples.

浣腸!!!

I think that double-staves-off dementia.

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