Actively speaking two languages protects against cognitive impairment
uoc.edu
uoc.edu
It's from an open University that's a project for lifelong learning funded as a public service in Catalonia - promoting the catalan language in the region is a key point of the project, so studies finding out that bilingualism is something great to have raise red flags about the nationalist agenda behind it.
To be clear, I'm not trying to make a point against catalan people or taking a position in any political side whatsoever. I'm just pointing out the potential for local context affecting the scientific method here.
[0] https://www.elmundo.es/cataluna/2019/04/25/5cc192b4fdddff712...
[1] http://convivenciacivicacatalana.blogspot.com/p/administraci...
Spain is not a single nation, its a state with several historical nationalities.
So the use of "[action] deterred from [region the action might occur in" was surprising and possibly incorrect. If you'd said "[...] deterred in [...]", it would have been perfectly grammatical English.
It's a weird nit to pick in such harsh language, especially on a comment section that's more likely than the typical HN comment page to attract people who are not native English speakers.
Spanish is the main language in Spain, the only spoken by everybody, therefore can be inferred easily that X = Spanish
Having this in mind, 'Y' can be inferred easily also.
"the idea that Spanish should be deterred from [being used in] part of a territory is surrealist"
Territory means 'Spain' in this context.
Hope this helps
Definition of deter
transitive verb
1 : to turn aside, discourage, or prevent from acting
she would not be deterred by threats
2 : inhibit
painting to deter rust
Do you actually fail to understand what pvaldes was trying to communicate?
They may simply research on topics they get founding and publish the nice results.
TIL there's an ¡Ay Carmela! movie. Recommended or not?
https://www.idescat.cat/novetats/?id=3446&lang=en
The quick version, in a single image, with the lightest area being the region of Barcelona:
Castilian Spanish, when used in English, is often used to denote the dialects spoken in Spain, as opposed to the dialects spoken in Latin America. This is not the topic at hand here, so there isn't much point in calling it Castilian (especially since many English speakers would not be familiar with that term) over Spanish.
adjective
relating to Spain, its people, or its language.
1. the people of Spain.
2. a Romance language spoken in Spain and in much of Central and South America.So in theory you could potentially realize similar benefits without learning another spoken language.
Vielleicht sind die zweisprachigen Sprecher jedoch besser darauf vorbereitet, die Wahrheit zu finden: Sprache ist Politik - Es wird besser, je mehr Sie es verwenden.
> "The facts—man, happening, amount, place, time—are true in each case. They could be sworn to by the whole membership of an interfaith conference. But the interpretation placed on them—who communicates these facts to whom? why? when?—makes them into propaganda."
Here are the facts that the article established:
- Lifelong degree of bilingualism predicts delay in age of onset for all clinical measure of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI).
- This is NOT true for Alzheimer's Disease patients.
- This prediction was independent of occupation, education, and job attainment.
The second bullet point isn't properly emphasized in the article, but it's directly from the abstract.
The researcher has a hypothesis that multilingualism improves Cognitive Reserve [1], and, and Cognitive Reserve has already been established to have an effect on the timeline of Alzheimer's disease related pathology. [2]
That being said, it's also true that "AD is the most common etiology of MCI and mild dementia" [3], and the researcher has a hypothesis that the multilingualism improves Cognitive Reserve.
Based on the existing hypothesis of how CR and AD interact, the lack of correlation in AD patients could make sense, and should not be seen as counter-evidence to the bilingualism increases CR hypothesis.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_reserve
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3507991/#S2titl...
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4185370/#S5titl...
The title of the original paper is Active bilingualism delays the onset of mild cognitive impairment which is also clear, if a little stilted as a headline.
Submitters: please follow the site guidelines, which include: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
My grandmother reads a lot of novels, including quite complicated ones and does a lot of language puzzles, yet only knows one language. I'm sure that if she would only watch television and not read a lot of (medieval-based) novels and language puzzles, then she will experience cognitive decline earlier in her life.
I think the mantra "use it or lose it" is quite true in nature, in general.
They determined fluency in two languages (Spanish and Catalan) in people hospitalized in and around Barcelona. There are some hard-core Catalans that hardly --or even refuse to-- speak Spanish there, but not that many in Barcelona, but there are (many) people from other regions in Spain who are not fluent in Catalan, because they started working and living there a long time ago, when speaking Catalan simply was not needed, or perhaps still forbidden. These will be older, poorer and more frequently hospitalized. So they might simply be looking at two very different groups. Not a word about that in the abstract. I can't access the article.
If actively speaking two languages has an influence, I wouldn't expect much of a difference between Spanish and Catalan: they are close enough to be seen as dialects. They should test this on e.g. English/Urdu speakers or Hungarian/Rumanian.
The paper abstract doesn't mention controlling for location. That would also be an interesting thing to test.
It would be interesting to see if this also applied to other combinations of languages.
I'd also be very interested in a comparison of two language vs. three language. Switzerland would be the obvious choice but children from partners that don't speak the same language and use English as a lingua franca or Canadians with one extra language (Chinese living in Canada etc.) should provide a big enough sample.
You cannot prove (or imply) causation via observation. The only method we know to find causation is by setting up an experiment. This study however merely measures variables in a pre-existing context, without injecting independent variables. The only valid result you may extract from this is a correlation, never causation.
Please edit the title to reflect correlation or (IMO preferred) delete the submission, because such bad science surely does not pass the quality barrier of HN.
> This is pseudo-science. Please refrain from upvoting. You cannot prove (or imply) causation via observation. The only method we know to find causation is by setting up an experiment. This study however merely measures variables in a pre-existing context, without injecting independent variables. The only valid result you may extract from this is a correlation, never causation.
> Please edit the title to reflect correlation or (IMO preferred) delete the submission, because such bad science surely does not pass the quality barrier of HN.
Hmm...
If I say "vegetables save you from cancer" that implies a causation, wouldn't you agree? Just because it does not explicitly say "cause" it still very clearly says "if you do X, Y will happen". Why do you think this is not applicable?
Also, causal deduction is not the only way to arrive at a competent causal theory; humans and animals do it all the time, and they do it to such proficiency that it cannot be explained by a methodical process of causal deduction.
As an example of what BDNF does: endurance exercise is known for elevating serum BDNF levels long-term [1] and endurance exercise has been shown to help with Parkinsons' [2].
Thus, can it be that these speaking two languages experience more of that stresses thorough their life? The article does not suggest that these factors were, well, factored out.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6613032/
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28870627/
PS
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260394068_Long_term... - they suggest that habitual exercise does not produce more BDNF or it is not BDNF that acts on the brain, I counter that body utilizes it better, just like glucose in blood.
Would this extend to learning in general? E.g. learning more than one musical instrument?
Until someone finds some bacterial or pathogen cause for Alzheimer's and dementia, funding should go on the "we don't use it we lose it" assumption. Yes there may be other factors of course, and given the surprise over stomach ulcers it's entirely possible the use it or lose it idea is wrong.
But science funding needs to be a smart money play not a scattergun.
Scientists like to measure natural language against dementia probably because its easier to do then some other form of knowledge (like being good in multiple disciplines).
From the practical standpoint, learning more then 1 one language doesn't make any sense - practical value you get from it is next to 0 compared to for example learning medicine, electronics, IT, math etc.
Especially because it requires the same amount of time.
That may be true if you're living in a country where English is the main language, otherwise adding English has a lot of practical value.
Compare https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/ (600-2200 class hours for B2 proficiency)
Source missing. Seriously though, you sound very certain of your claim so let me at least offer a counterpoint, however anecdotal.
I've had tons of practical value out of some of my language skills. I would not have the career I have today if I hadn't learned English as a second language. Admittedly my third language, German, was a bust, but I blame the way schools teach language for that (grammar, grammar, grammar). My fourth language, Thai, OTOH was a great investment not only because it made it possible for me to be self-sufficient and socialize (and make friends) while living in Thailand, it also was so different from the previous languages I knew that I could feel my mind expanding. Finally, I've also cracked my head at (Mandarin) Chinese but in that case the practical value has been much closer to 0 but it at least made it possible for me to travel around China on my own, which was well worth it at the time for me.
ducks
But since they're making claims about bilingualism vs no bilingualism, we also need to see a "Table 1" equivalent for those two categories, so we can understand at a glance which confounders are correlated with these values.
Secondarily, it's a bit concerning (for their hypothesis) that bilingualism is associated with less mild cognitive impairment but not with the more severe dementia phenotype.
The Wittgenstein adage
> The limits of my language mean the limits of my world
rings true for me.
Wait so, N = 266? All from Barcelona?
C'mon.
Assuming random sampling, it's a misconception that you need ten thousand participants to have a useful study.
It feels like everything to say has already been said about the bias of small sample sizes and the dangers of p-hacking. But it also seems like the discussion is inevitable here.
I wonder if there’s a new insight to glean, somehow...
For a background on why p-values are misleading, see https://youtu.be/42QuXLucH3Q which is excellent. He points out that 0.05 was selected by Ronald Fischer in 1925, and people have gone with it since.
Root parent comment is right to question if the N=266 is truly random given the description we do have at hand.
You are right to say N=266 could be truly random and we don't have enough information to definitively decide either way.
We can't read the study so it's just what we have - saying you have a truly random sample with a group just from Barcelona is extremely hard to accept. I mean even you've got to admit that.
It's highly dependent on the magnitude of the effect (when comparing two populations) and the distribution across a population.
For something dementia, where even measuring the level of cognitive decline is highly subjective, no way N=27 would be enough.
That being said, article mentions 63+135+68 individuals in 4 hospitals in a single city.
Of course actually picking 27 random people is extremely hard, so actual studies compensate by picking more people.
will be difficult to demonstrate that they can control for all individual differences at n=266 to prove differences in dementia outcomes are linked to a single variable.
Wouldn't immigrants by nature have to be bilingual because they have to be able to communicate in the nation they immigrated to?
- What says Lord Stanley? will he bring his power?
- My lord, he doth deny to come.
- Off with his son George's head!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bosworth_Field#Stanl...
"We wanted to take advantage of this variability, and instead of comparing monolingual and bilingual people, we looked at whether in Barcelona – where everyone is more or less bilingual – there was a certain degree of bilingualism that had neuroprotective benefits."
There's still corellation here, like professions where the lingua franca isn't the local language (programming, medicine, music (to some degree), sciences, etc). The paper claims the effect appears equally strong in all occupations though.
And don't make me start to talking about how normal is the mental health of the same people that trashed and burned Barcelona last years, because they felt "oppressed" by a man that died 30 years before they born. Or the lobby trying to erase the history claiming than Leonardo Da Vinci, Cervantes and "put your name here" were really from Catalonia. Very sane behavior, for sure.
Trust me (or your gut if you prefer). You can find crazy people equally among bilingual, monolingual, translingual and people with just mischieving tongues. Just take a look at how mental asylums are distributed.
This is just one of thousands of articles that support a patriotic narrative so are published. Is politics disguised as science. The opposite idea would never reach the journals.
the working class tend to be multilingual - nurses, deliverymen, (food) hawkers, construction workers, odd-job labourers. when you think of someone who has to juggle multiple languages - mandarin, cantonese, malay, tamil, a smattering of english - often as a necessity, it's someone who's had to hustle at the lower rungs of society.
the educated class tend to be monolingual - researchers, policy makers, lawyers, bankers - they've only ever had to operate in environments where the only language used is english.
I’m not sure it’s a sign of social status in English speaking countries. The wealthier you are, the more you can just expect everybody around you to speak English. Where I live, the most common language I’d expect somebody to know besides English is Spanish, and the local Spanish speaking population isn’t known for their excessive wealth.
There is some evidence that Poland was spared from XIII black plague, and - so far - relatively unaffected - by the covid19 pandemic - because it lies off the main transport and travel routes.
In Poland, most movies have a Polish voice-over. If you see someone using subtitles, you can be pretty sure he's a cinema fan. Back in the transitional period after 1989 it was common to find english labels on imported goods, but not anymore. Everything except radio music is translated.
The total population of multilingual people is obviously quite hard to measure. But every study I’ve seen has put it above 50% of the worlds population, with English being the most common second language choice. EU stats on Poland say 1/4 of its population speak a second language well enough to hold a conversation, with the most popular languages being English, German and Russian, in that order.
https://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/archives/...
With 2k daily new cases, unaffected my ass.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/poland/
The R (effective reproduction rate) coefficient is between 1.3 and 1.5 depending on the interval chosen, which is a very worrying trend. But remember Italy was 4.5 in February. Of course, if they cook books to hide financial deficit they sure can fake infection stats.
http://trackingr-env.eba-9muars8y.us-east-2.elasticbeanstalk...
Those countries have longer life expectancies so it's hard to do apples-to-apples for rich countries to poor countries.
I do think the "use it or lose it" model for neurodegeneration makes a lot of sense, in the same way you lose muscles if you don't use them, so bilingual is an interesting proxy for greater brain use. Although I also think the lack-of-sleep model makes sense too so I really don't know.
https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/news/2018-05-15/bilingual-brai...
This one appears to have brain scans to suggest structural differences do exist
We dont know how this translates to other forms of bilinguism at all.
As an example I am Swedish but fluent in English and Dutch. In my family we use a mix of Swedish and Dutch. But I use Swedish exclusively with anyone else who is Swedish unless someone is in the conversation who only knows English. I have both friends and colleagues who don't speak Swedish (nor Dutch) and I always speak Dutch with my wife's family.
In this context it makes little sense that I'd simply stop using multiple languages, since then I'd be unable to speak to parts of my family, friends, and coworkers.
They could have actually gone to hundreds of elderly homes in Barcelona or, for that matter, better, in places where everyone is mostly actively bilingual (central/north Catalonia?) and regions where people are mostly monolinguals (Castille?) and requested anonymized data from medical records with that information (actively spoken languages vs. mental condition), or if that information was not available, to actually request it to be collected across all these centers, and then establish much stronger correlations.
edit: I originally wrote "the methodology was unnecessarily weak for the conclusions", which was wrong to say from my side. We cannot always do what would be best but must do with what is available to us.
Going to a school in Europe?
Living as a minority with its own language in a country with another language?
In many countries, wealthier students receive more instruction in a foreign language and have access to full immersion programs.
Having a logically structured thinking or being good in math (all related with having dementia or not) does not depend on how many times you can say 'street' in different languages.
Ontario has 14.57 millions inhabitants and about 250 000 people living with dementia.
That's 1.7% in Quebec vs 1.7% in Ontario. Bilinguism does not seem to protect people much outside of Barcelona.
EDIT: British Columbia has apparently somewhere around 70 000 people living with dementia for a population of 5.07 millions, which is about 1.4%.
As other commenters have already pointed out, the study took place in Barcelona, where multilingualism is prominent and doesn't correlate with any specific group or trait.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingualism#Myths
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multilingual_countries...
(I've learned a fair amount of spanish from sports, very little of which I could ever use in polite company. A few years ago I met someone's parents, and although I hear about mothers all the time on the pitch, it was memorable as the first time I'd been introduced to a real one.)
Four is up there with Charles V[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24513426
[1] who died at 58, due to poor diet and poor (in)breeding? In any case he shan't serve as a good dementia control.
Most schools introduce more languages today, no ? And I guess there is no motivation to keep language skills active beyond school, so any skill here will likely atrophy like me French :(
I enjoyed Bon Cop Bad Cop (2006), a bilingual flick which IIRC can be found with either english or french subs.
You can however get a lot of attention for "finding" a causation.
So to answer your question, it's quacks selling correlation as causation.
I wonder if actively used bureaucratese is far enough from Standard English to count as second lect? "In view of the somewhat nebulous and inexplicit nature of your remit, and the arguably marginal and peripheral nature of your influence within the central deliberations and decisions within the political process, there could be a case for restructuring their action priorities in such a way as to eliminate your liquidation from their immediate agenda."
Bonus clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0j2dVuhr6s&t=60