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Welcome to the Language Neuroscience Podcast.
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This is episode 36.
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I have an amazing guest today, but first quickly I have a favor to ask.
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I know that some people have used the Language Neuroscience Podcast for teaching.
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If you've done so, could you kindly shoot me a quick email describing how?
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smwilson@uq.edu.au.
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You know how academia is, sometimes you need to document things.
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Okay, my guest today is Ellen Bialystok, Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology
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at York University in Toronto, Canada.
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Ellen is a phenomenally productive and highly influential researcher
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who has spent five decades investigating how speaking two languages
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shapes cognitive processes and brain structure across the lifespan.
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She's looked from early childhood through aging and dementia.
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She's especially well-known for her research findings that bilingualism
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confers cognitive advantages, particularly in aging,
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and may be protective against dementia.
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We're going to discuss all of this today.
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All right, let's get to it.
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Hi, Ellen, how are you?
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Hi, Stephen. Thank you for inviting me.
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Oh, yeah, it's really great to have a chance to talk with you.
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So, let's get started.
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I often like to find out about people's background
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and what led them into the kind of researcher that they've become.
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And you're particularly interesting, right?
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You've made your career studying bilingualism.
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Made your name is the world's strongest proponent
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of the hypothesis that bilingualism confers a cognitive advantage.
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And you come from a very famously bilingual country.
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So I'm curious about your own experiences with languages.
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What led you to this area of study?
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Okay, so I think the assumption in your question is that people choose
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what they're going to study, and I'm not sure I agree with that.
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I don't-- I didn't ever choose this, but you go one step
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in front of the other, and the path takes you there.
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So, I was always-- as long as I could remember--
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as a little kid, I was interested in the relationship
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between language and thought.
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I thought this was just the most baffling question.
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And I remember thinking when I was a little kid or wondering,
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if you can't speak English, can you think?
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I thought, I mean, that was, I was little, OK?
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So that was the sort of thing that was always on my mind.
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And I didn't ever choose the particular path,
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but I did make small decisions that take you to where you are.
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So, for example, I entered university.
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I studied psychology.
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It was a good thing for girls to do.
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I was interested in language.
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My graduate work was all on language acquisition in children.
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But again, from the perspective of language and thought,
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as they're learning words, do they already
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have the concepts, or does learning the word
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create an opportunity for the concept?
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Really the same question I had when I was like six.
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And now I was studying it as a graduate student.
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I was interested in that.
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But bilingualism wasn't a field.
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And it certainly wasn't anything on my radar.
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And so, the way I got into bilingualism
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was more a series of accidents.
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And once I started looking at bilingualism,
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in fact, I didn't start with bilingualism.
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I started with second language acquisition.
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Okay. And then it's just accidents all the way down.
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It's not turtles.
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It's accidents.
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So, when I got my PhD, there were no jobs.
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There were no academic positions anywhere.
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I ended up getting a job as a project director on a study
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that was already funded.
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It had no room for input.
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I was supposed to manage the project.
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And the project was a study of high school students
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in Ontario learning French as a second language.
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That was the study.
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The methodology was determined.
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The measures were determined.
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I was just supposed to manage it.
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But I'm not very good at following instructions.
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And so, I really didn't like this project.
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I mean, I really didn't like it.
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And it was really the most formative thing that ever happened
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because I had never read any of the literature
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on second language acquisition.
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So, I had to absorb all that.
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I had to somehow fulfill the mandate
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of this funded research project.
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Yep.
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But in my spare time, I was doing side projects.
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So, I was running little experiments
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on second language acquisition as I was going through this.
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So that got me into the world of second language acquisition
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and applied linguistics.
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And then from there, you just move around.
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And things become interesting.
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And you follow that lead.
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And one thing leads to the next.
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Right.
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Oh, that's fascinating.
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Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that we
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choose our field of study.
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But yes, what's the path that gets us there?
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And everybody's got a unique path.
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So, you started out studying,
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did you use those high schoolers in your earliest experiments,
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In the…?
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Oh, yeah.
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Yeah, that's where it started.
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And I was trained as a developmental psychologist.
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So, when I did get an academic position,
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I cycled back to that.
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And my research became more firmly grounded
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in developmental psychology, child development,
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some language acquisition, but not only language acquisition.
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So, I did that for a long time.
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And then bilingualism just kind of crept in accidentally.
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I don't even know if I can recall the moment.
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I suddenly realized that you could just study bilingualism.
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Right.
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But your earliest major works in bilingualism
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were in the language acquisition space, right?
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Yeah.
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Well, they were,
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I mean, I never thought of myself as a language acquisition
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researcher in the usual sense, because I'm not a linguist.
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And I think you need to know a lot more about linguistics
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than I do, to do justice to those processes.
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So, I came at it from psychology, psycholinguistics.
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We can wave your hands at grammatical structures
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and not be expected to take them too seriously,
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as I say, psycholinguists.
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And so that was always my approach.
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Well, but increasingly, if I were doing this now,
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I think a much better firmer knowledge of linguistics
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would have been important.
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Oh, I don't know.
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Sometimes I feel like it can be an impediment.
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I mean, Roger Brown, Roger Brown, right,
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was a psychologist.
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And he did the most innovative studies
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on early language acquisition, syntax in particular.
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And I actually find when I read his stuff,
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it's almost his naivety that makes it good,
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because he comes at it as an amateur, and he's just like,
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oh, wow, grammar, like, oh, what's up with that?
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And he almost approaches it as a child himself,
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you feel when I read his book.
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And it led him to think, oh, what would a child actually
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need to get this?
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Do you know what I mean?
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Absolutely, absolutely right.
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But he never would have called himself a linguist.
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No, of course not.
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That's what I'm saying.
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He's in the psychology department.
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I mean, his work is so foundational.
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Everything we know about children's language acquisition
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somehow comes back to his work, and his students,
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and those three little kids who are learning English.
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Exactly.
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So yeah, I mean, he was a psychologist, right?
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Definitely not a linguist.
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So, maybe it's OK.
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So, you know--
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I don't know that he was a social psychologist.
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He wasn't even a cognitive psychologist.
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Yeah.
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He was a social psychologist, which is pretty incredible.
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Yeah, so I think it's OK that you came to bilingualism
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as a psychologist and not as a linguist.
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Thank you.
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But when you were probably starting out,
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certainly, in the earlier in the 20th century,
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there was a widespread belief that bilingualism was detrimental
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to kids.
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Was that view still prevalent when you got into this field
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or started to create this field?
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So that line, that particular line,
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I can track it pretty closely to what's going on
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and the people who were major players in that.
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People talk about the turning point
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being the 1962 study out of Montreal,
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where Wally Lambert and Elizabeth Peal
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tried to bring some methodological rigor to the question
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and see what's really going on.
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And their famous result is that the bilingual kids
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were better on both verbal and nonverbal tasks.
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That's so.
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There is no,
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the previous people in the first half of the century,
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they called it mental retardation from bilingualism.
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They talked like that.
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Yeah.
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Peal and Lambert said there's nothing of the kind.
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In fact, the bilinguals are better.
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So, what did Peal and Lambert...
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Except they're wrong, sorry.
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I was going to say, what did they do differently
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to reach that conclusion?
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Well, they did a lot that was different,
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but there were problems in their study.
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And in fact, I recently published a paper with a couple
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of my students where we did a deep dive into the Peal
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and Lambert paper.
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And their conclusions were not right.
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The interpretation of the study and its place
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in this history is not right.
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And yet, without them, we wouldn't be where we are.
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So, we can tolerate a few errors to get
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to this more elevated point.
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Here is what was going on.
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All of the research, all of the research up to and including
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Peal and Lambert was based on standard IQ tests.
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And their description, their definition of intelligence
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was, it's your score on an IQ test.
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So, up to that point, people were giving intelligence tests
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verbal and nonverbal to kids who were monolingual
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or bilingual.
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And the bilingual kids did more poorly.
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Lots of reasons they did more poorly.
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They were immigrants.
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They didn't know the language the test was in.
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There were socioeconomic differences.
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There were all sorts of reasons.
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They did more poorly, that were never documented.
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So, one thing Peal and Lambert were really careful about,
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they thought, was matching the monolinguals and bilinguals
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on all of these extraneous factors
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like socioeconomic status and so on.
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So, they gave these carefully matched kids.
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They were 10 years old.
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These tests, the bilinguals did better.
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Now, score on an IQ test is interesting.
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But it's really just a score on a test.
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What happened afterwards when I started working
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in the area, in the '70s was not measuring kids on standard IQ
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tests, but on their performance on cognitive tasks.
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So how do you get from standard IQ tests
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to cognitive tasks with bilinguals?
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It was The Bridge.
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And I was very involved in The Bridge.
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The Bridge was once it became acceptable,
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and there's a lot of reasons they used IQ tests,
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once it became acceptable to not just use IQ tests
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to measure kids, the next chunk of research
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was on metalinguistic awareness,
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which is the perfect bridge between the two worlds.
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My hypothesis made sense.
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If bilingual kids were going to be better at anything,
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they would have better understanding of intuition
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about and awareness of language, because they spoke two of them.
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So that was the bridge between the IQ testing, which
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essentially ended with Peal and Lambert,
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and the actual cognitive tasks that didn't begin
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until really the '80s.
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So, it was that metalinguistic transition
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that started showing actual performance advantages
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for bilingual kids.
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OK.
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And do you think that the main flaw of the IQ tests
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was that, they were too influenced by language differences?
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And you needed to get away from language,
264
00:14:12,200 --> 00:14:15,960
or was it that you actually needed to focus on specifically
265
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they were,
266
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what was different about their language?
267
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Well, I think the first thing is you
268
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got to understand why this was happening.
269
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And it's not pretty.
270
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Why were people in the first half of the last century
271
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giving IQ tests to everybody?
272
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And who was behind it?
273
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It was the eugenicists.
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It was all followed from these really 19th century racist ideas.
275
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So, the 19th century eugenicists, people like Francis
276
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Galton and Paul Broca, they were really
277
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committed to this race intelligence equation.
278
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And they spent their careers trying
279
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to show how to prove it.
280
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So, they had these crazy ideas.
281
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They would do things like measure head circumference
282
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because bigger heads have bigger brains and bigger brains
283
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are smarter.
284
00:15:18,040 --> 00:15:22,880
They did all of this crazy stuff to prove their point.
285
00:15:22,880 --> 00:15:29,080
And then, in the early 1900s, Lewis Terman comes up
286
00:15:29,080 --> 00:15:31,360
with a scientific tool.
287
00:15:31,360 --> 00:15:33,480
You don't have to measure people's heads.
288
00:15:33,480 --> 00:15:35,480
You just give them this test.
289
00:15:35,480 --> 00:15:37,360
And then you know how smart they were.
290
00:15:37,360 --> 00:15:40,960
And Terman was a fellow traveler.
291
00:15:40,960 --> 00:15:44,520
He was a eugenicist just like the rest of them.
292
00:15:44,520 --> 00:15:50,400
So, the first IQ test, the Binet-Stanford IQ test,
293
00:15:50,400 --> 00:15:59,640
was that it was just leapt upon as the tool
294
00:15:59,640 --> 00:16:06,560
that would allow these people to prove their horrible ideas.
295
00:16:06,560 --> 00:16:08,840
That's why kids were given IQ tests
296
00:16:08,840 --> 00:16:11,500
because they were immigrants because they
297
00:16:11,500 --> 00:16:15,960
were racially different, all kinds of reasons.
298
00:16:15,960 --> 00:16:18,120
So that's why they were given these IQ tests.
299
00:16:18,120 --> 00:16:21,560
And they were given these tests without any attention
300
00:16:21,560 --> 00:16:24,160
to whether or not they spoke the language
301
00:16:24,160 --> 00:16:26,920
in which the questions were written.
302
00:16:26,920 --> 00:16:30,720
So, there wasn't, I don't want to go on about this too much.
303
00:16:30,720 --> 00:16:33,280
I mean, I find this history fascinating.
304
00:16:33,280 --> 00:16:37,840
There was one woman who was at Columbia University,
305
00:16:37,840 --> 00:16:38,920
who got it right.
306
00:16:38,920 --> 00:16:41,920
Name is Natalie Darcy.
307
00:16:41,920 --> 00:16:47,680
And during the '40s and '50s, she was giving IQ tests
308
00:16:47,680 --> 00:16:52,360
to kids, fully understanding everything I'm telling you.
309
00:16:52,360 --> 00:16:57,480
And she published some data from her own PhD,
310
00:16:57,480 --> 00:16:59,400
but then wrote two major reviews.
311
00:16:59,400 --> 00:17:03,840
And her conclusion was that if you give these kids
312
00:17:03,840 --> 00:17:08,480
these standardized tests, there will be no difference
313
00:17:08,480 --> 00:17:14,640
between monolingual and bilingual kids on nonverbal tests.
314
00:17:14,640 --> 00:17:18,760
But monolinguals will do better on verbal tests.
315
00:17:18,760 --> 00:17:21,920
And she was exactly right.
316
00:17:21,920 --> 00:17:24,880
So, the Peal and Lambert study didn't show that.
317
00:17:24,880 --> 00:17:26,000
Why not?
318
00:17:26,000 --> 00:17:30,880
So, in this review I do, if the paper I pull out some possible
319
00:17:30,880 --> 00:17:33,280
reasons why they got different results.
320
00:17:33,280 --> 00:17:37,840
The right result is, no difference on nonverbal tests.
321
00:17:37,840 --> 00:17:40,840
But monolinguals do better on verbal tests.
322
00:17:40,840 --> 00:17:42,600
Yeah, oh, that's fascinating.
323
00:17:42,600 --> 00:17:45,520
I mean, I'm glad you went back to this history
324
00:17:45,520 --> 00:17:49,160
because I also am a huge history of science buff.
325
00:17:49,160 --> 00:17:52,520
So, I always love to start with those foundational studies.
326
00:17:52,520 --> 00:17:54,760
Yeah, shame about the Broca contribution
327
00:17:54,760 --> 00:17:56,840
that you alluded to there.
328
00:17:56,840 --> 00:18:00,280
But yeah, so, you're making this interesting point here
329
00:18:00,280 --> 00:18:03,000
that you're kind of well associated
330
00:18:03,000 --> 00:18:05,040
with the concept of a bilingual advantage.
331
00:18:05,040 --> 00:18:06,320
But you're saying here, actually there's
332
00:18:06,320 --> 00:18:10,320
a subtle bilingual disadvantage on verbal tests. Right?
333
00:18:10,320 --> 00:18:14,640
So, bilingualism is a very good thing in many ways,
334
00:18:14,640 --> 00:18:18,200
but it's not 100% a free lunch, right?
335
00:18:18,200 --> 00:18:19,840
Exactly.
336
00:18:19,840 --> 00:18:25,640
And I actually recoil at the phrase bilingual advantage.
337
00:18:25,640 --> 00:18:28,240
For years I've been going around insisting
338
00:18:28,240 --> 00:18:30,680
that I never said that, but I did. (laughter)
339
00:18:30,680 --> 00:18:32,360
And people showed me that I did. So, OK.
340
00:18:32,360 --> 00:18:34,080
I mean, I was--
341
00:18:34,080 --> 00:18:36,320
What would you like to call it today?
342
00:18:36,320 --> 00:18:38,280
What would you prefer to call it?
343
00:18:38,280 --> 00:18:40,760
Once you label it, once you label it,
344
00:18:40,760 --> 00:18:43,480
bilingual advantage, it becomes a thing.
345
00:18:43,480 --> 00:18:45,280
And once something is a thing, you
346
00:18:45,280 --> 00:18:47,000
can go out and look for it.
347
00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:48,600
So, let me look over here.
348
00:18:48,600 --> 00:18:49,920
Nope, not there.
349
00:18:49,920 --> 00:18:50,600
How about here?
350
00:18:50,600 --> 00:18:51,120
Is it here?
351
00:18:51,120 --> 00:18:52,120
Nope, not there.
352
00:18:52,120 --> 00:18:55,440
And when you don't find it, you say it doesn't exist. Right?
353
00:18:55,440 --> 00:18:58,000
So, you can't objectify it.
354
00:18:58,000 --> 00:19:03,200
It's an incredibly reductionist approach
355
00:19:03,200 --> 00:19:07,400
to a very complex set of abilities.
356
00:19:07,400 --> 00:19:14,080
So now what I would say is, from the moment of birth,
357
00:19:14,080 --> 00:19:19,280
bilingualism and just being in a bilingual environment,
358
00:19:19,280 --> 00:19:22,040
changes mind and brain.
359
00:19:22,040 --> 00:19:26,960
Children's brain development is instantly modified
360
00:19:26,960 --> 00:19:29,280
from being in a bilingual environment.
361
00:19:29,280 --> 00:19:33,040
Children's development from the earliest days
362
00:19:33,040 --> 00:19:37,000
are changed by being in a bilingual environment.
363
00:19:37,000 --> 00:19:41,800
And these adaptations continue throughout life.
364
00:19:41,800 --> 00:19:44,160
Now, are they advantages?
365
00:19:44,160 --> 00:19:46,520
On balance, they are advantages,
366
00:19:46,520 --> 00:19:50,800
because most of what's modified is better.
367
00:19:50,800 --> 00:19:55,960
And this experience leads to a more efficient and more
368
00:19:55,960 --> 00:19:58,040
resilient brain.
369
00:19:58,040 --> 00:20:00,360
So that's an advantage.
370
00:20:00,360 --> 00:20:03,800
But it doesn't mean that if you just pull a bilingual off
371
00:20:03,800 --> 00:20:07,720
the street, they're going to perform a Stroop test
372
00:20:07,720 --> 00:20:09,400
better than somebody else.
373
00:20:09,400 --> 00:20:11,080
That's not going to happen.
374
00:20:11,080 --> 00:20:13,560
It's not that kind of advantage.
375
00:20:13,560 --> 00:20:17,440
But it's a reconfiguration of mind and brain that leads
376
00:20:17,440 --> 00:20:21,480
to more resilience, better efficiency,
377
00:20:21,480 --> 00:20:24,800
and in the end, the real advantage
378
00:20:24,800 --> 00:20:31,280
is in older age, because cognition holds on better,
379
00:20:31,280 --> 00:20:36,440
because it's more adaptable to what this individual is
380
00:20:36,440 --> 00:20:38,080
trying to do.
381
00:20:38,080 --> 00:20:40,000
So that's the bilingual advantage.
382
00:20:40,000 --> 00:20:43,840
It's not the ability to do the Stroop test.
383
00:20:43,840 --> 00:20:49,160
It's a much broader based set of processes
384
00:20:49,160 --> 00:20:54,280
that are better tuned to the cognitive and brain challenges
385
00:20:54,280 --> 00:20:55,280
throughout life.
386
00:20:55,280 --> 00:20:56,040
OK.
387
00:20:56,040 --> 00:20:57,200
That makes a lot of sense.
388
00:20:57,200 --> 00:20:59,440
And we're going to talk in just a moment about, the evidence
389
00:20:59,440 --> 00:21:04,040
that you've published for that position
390
00:21:04,040 --> 00:21:08,240
about the advantages that emerge in older age.
391
00:21:08,240 --> 00:21:09,840
But before we quite get to that,
392
00:21:09,840 --> 00:21:14,800
I think that you're talking about essentially executive
393
00:21:14,800 --> 00:21:16,960
function advantages.
394
00:21:16,960 --> 00:21:19,200
But there's also these kinds of social advantages
395
00:21:19,200 --> 00:21:21,080
to being a bilingual that I actually
396
00:21:21,080 --> 00:21:24,720
think there's a much less contentious in the modern field.
397
00:21:24,720 --> 00:21:26,600
Do you think that's the case?
398
00:21:26,600 --> 00:21:27,200
I agree.
399
00:21:27,200 --> 00:21:29,920
And people don't really talk about that.
400
00:21:29,920 --> 00:21:32,040
Is it just because we all agree on that?
401
00:21:32,040 --> 00:21:33,480
I think we do agree with it.
402
00:21:33,480 --> 00:21:39,280
But I used to end talks and arguments by saying,
403
00:21:39,280 --> 00:21:42,160
even if everything I'm saying is wrong,
404
00:21:42,160 --> 00:21:45,160
even if there's no cognitive advantage,
405
00:21:45,160 --> 00:21:49,600
even if your brains aren't, even if all of that would be the case,
406
00:21:49,600 --> 00:21:54,600
which it isn't, a bilingual can speak two languages.
407
00:21:54,600 --> 00:21:56,400
And that's huge.
408
00:21:56,400 --> 00:21:58,680
They can travel to different places.
409
00:21:58,680 --> 00:22:00,000
They can read different books.
410
00:22:00,000 --> 00:22:02,040
They can communicate with different people.
411
00:22:02,040 --> 00:22:03,760
They can order different food.
412
00:22:03,760 --> 00:22:05,960
You can't take that piece away.
413
00:22:05,960 --> 00:22:08,080
And I think that's all advantage.
414
00:22:08,080 --> 00:22:09,040
But you're right.
415
00:22:09,040 --> 00:22:10,360
Nobody talks about it.
416
00:22:10,360 --> 00:22:10,880
Well, yeah.
417
00:22:10,880 --> 00:22:14,440
I think it's because it's a kind of a silent consensus.
418
00:22:14,440 --> 00:22:16,640
And I think from my perspective, I
419
00:22:16,640 --> 00:22:19,840
would just see it as being like, you have like,
420
00:22:19,840 --> 00:22:22,480
complete insight into the differing mindsets
421
00:22:22,480 --> 00:22:26,320
in two different human cultures, to the extent
422
00:22:26,320 --> 00:22:28,960
that mindset and language are interlinked in some way, which
423
00:22:28,960 --> 00:22:32,400
I kind of think they are, although I'm into Wolfian.
424
00:22:32,400 --> 00:22:35,160
But just having that, I think, would really enhance your
425
00:22:35,160 --> 00:22:36,640
understanding of what it is to be human.
426
00:22:36,640 --> 00:22:40,960
Because you've kind of got access to two ways of being human.
427
00:22:40,960 --> 00:22:42,280
Does that resonate with you at all?
428
00:22:42,280 --> 00:22:45,000
I agree.
429
00:22:45,000 --> 00:22:45,720
I agree.
430
00:22:45,720 --> 00:22:47,800
Now, I mean, I'm a cognitive psychologist, so I'm
431
00:22:47,800 --> 00:22:51,280
going to want to track down those cognitive changes too.
432
00:22:51,280 --> 00:22:54,520
But I mean, I think if you could just
433
00:22:54,520 --> 00:23:00,680
package that piece, you know, what do we mean to have that kind of access,
434
00:23:00,680 --> 00:23:06,000
that kind of perspective, I think that's an enormous benefit?
435
00:23:06,000 --> 00:23:07,440
Yeah, and we don't study that, do we?
436
00:23:07,440 --> 00:23:08,800
Like nobody's really studied.
437
00:23:08,800 --> 00:23:09,800
There are a few studies.
438
00:23:09,800 --> 00:23:14,360
Actually, there are a few studies that look on perspective
439
00:23:14,360 --> 00:23:15,080
taking.
440
00:23:15,080 --> 00:23:18,080
The ability to take a different position, a different perspective,
441
00:23:18,080 --> 00:23:20,720
and an argument, see things in another way.
442
00:23:20,720 --> 00:23:22,560
There's some studies.
443
00:23:22,560 --> 00:23:23,720
And it's all true.
444
00:23:23,720 --> 00:23:26,960
Bilinguals are good at that.
445
00:23:26,960 --> 00:23:27,480
Yeah.
446
00:23:27,480 --> 00:23:28,920
OK, great.
447
00:23:28,920 --> 00:23:31,560
So, let's now talk about the more contentious issue, which
448
00:23:31,560 --> 00:23:34,320
Is, the cognitive or executive advantages.
449
00:23:34,320 --> 00:23:36,520
I'm probably not going to say it in quite the way
450
00:23:36,520 --> 00:23:39,640
that you'd prefer to.
451
00:23:39,640 --> 00:23:43,920
But can we start with talking about your 2004 paper
452
00:23:43,920 --> 00:23:47,880
that I think was one of the very influential ones that
453
00:23:47,880 --> 00:23:52,840
made this case where you did use the Simon task,
454
00:23:52,840 --> 00:23:56,880
and you looked at older and younger bilinguals and monolinguals.
455
00:23:56,880 --> 00:24:00,560
Can you kind of run through what you found in that paper?
456
00:24:00,560 --> 00:24:01,080
Right.
457
00:24:01,080 --> 00:24:02,600
So, that paper came out.
458
00:24:02,600 --> 00:24:05,760
I'm going to go back to this, you do the next thing,
459
00:24:05,760 --> 00:24:06,680
and then the next thing.
460
00:24:06,680 --> 00:24:12,560
So, I'd been a developmental psychologist forever.
461
00:24:12,560 --> 00:24:16,560
I'd only ever done research with children.
462
00:24:16,560 --> 00:24:23,480
And I had kind of gotten as far as I could with bilingual children.
463
00:24:23,480 --> 00:24:26,680
I was giving them all these children,
464
00:24:26,680 --> 00:24:32,520
child-appropriate tasks, where they had to do certain things
465
00:24:32,520 --> 00:24:36,360
that looked like what we would call executive functioning,
466
00:24:36,360 --> 00:24:38,400
but these were little kids.
467
00:24:38,400 --> 00:24:41,360
So, I'd gotten as far as I could with that.
468
00:24:41,360 --> 00:24:50,200
And I got this grant that included release time.
469
00:24:50,200 --> 00:25:00,320
So, I used the grant to learn how to do adult cognitive research,
470
00:25:00,320 --> 00:25:02,480
because I've never really done it.
471
00:25:02,480 --> 00:25:05,680
And I spent two years at this wonderful institute,
472
00:25:05,680 --> 00:25:08,640
the Rotman Research Institute, working with colleagues
473
00:25:08,640 --> 00:25:16,080
there, trying to figure out how we would take my research
474
00:25:16,080 --> 00:25:19,240
with children, bilingual children,
475
00:25:19,240 --> 00:25:23,680
and re-instantiate it in a meaningful way with adults,
476
00:25:23,680 --> 00:25:25,240
because nobody had ever looked at that.
477
00:25:25,240 --> 00:25:29,720
That was complete Terran Cognita.
478
00:25:29,720 --> 00:25:31,280
So, we came up with this study.
479
00:25:31,280 --> 00:25:37,280
The first study, exactly the one you mentioned,
480
00:25:37,280 --> 00:25:39,040
where we had,
481
00:25:39,040 --> 00:25:41,080
and because I wasn't in a university,
482
00:25:41,080 --> 00:25:45,440
we didn't have access to an undergraduate research pool.
483
00:25:45,440 --> 00:25:48,480
So, there was no young adults, which is…
484
00:25:48,480 --> 00:25:51,080
What's a cognitive psychologist to do? (Laughter)
485
00:25:51,080 --> 00:25:52,320
Exactly.
486
00:25:52,320 --> 00:25:55,280
That's what all cognitive psychology is based on.
487
00:25:55,280 --> 00:25:58,800
19-year-old kids taking psych 100, right?
488
00:25:58,800 --> 00:26:00,080
That's it.
489
00:26:00,080 --> 00:26:02,720
But anyway, I didn't have access to that, because I was at this other place,
490
00:26:02,720 --> 00:26:05,840
which was a geriatric hospital.
491
00:26:05,840 --> 00:26:09,280
So, I had access to older adults.
492
00:26:09,280 --> 00:26:12,800
And so, we filled it in with what we call middle-aged adults.
493
00:26:12,800 --> 00:26:14,560
And they were just people in the community
494
00:26:14,560 --> 00:26:17,680
that we got largely by word of mouth.
495
00:26:17,680 --> 00:26:21,320
And we did this study, and the results were very dramatic.
496
00:26:21,320 --> 00:26:24,280
And to this day, I'm not convinced there
497
00:26:24,280 --> 00:26:26,160
Wasn’t a problem in this study.
498
00:26:26,160 --> 00:26:28,560
The results were almost too dramatic,
499
00:26:28,560 --> 00:26:32,240
because I've replicated that basic design many times,
500
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:36,560
and the results have never been quite as large.
501
00:26:36,560 --> 00:26:39,920
We get significant results, lots of them.
502
00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:43,240
But that was particularly eye-popping.
503
00:26:43,240 --> 00:26:45,360
Can you share the results with our listeners
504
00:26:45,360 --> 00:26:48,480
who will not necessarily have read the paper?
505
00:26:48,480 --> 00:26:49,720
OK.
506
00:26:49,720 --> 00:26:54,800
We had monolingual and bilingual participants
507
00:26:54,800 --> 00:27:01,120
who were either like 45-years-old or 75-years-old.
508
00:27:01,120 --> 00:27:03,200
And they did a Simon task, which
509
00:27:03,200 --> 00:27:06,920
is a standard executive function measure
510
00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:09,800
in the cognitive literature.
511
00:27:09,800 --> 00:27:11,960
The task is very simple.
512
00:27:11,960 --> 00:27:19,320
You have to control your response by resisting a compelling queue.
513
00:27:19,320 --> 00:27:25,040
You look at a screen, and there is do we use arrows?
514
00:27:25,040 --> 00:27:27,200
Or I don't remember what the stimuli were,
515
00:27:27,200 --> 00:27:30,280
but they might have colored squares or something.
516
00:27:30,280 --> 00:27:31,400
And you get a rule.
517
00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:34,880
If you see a red square, press the right button.
518
00:27:34,880 --> 00:27:40,240
If you see a green square, press the left button.
519
00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:41,680
So that's easy.
520
00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:47,320
Except the red and green squares appeared on one
521
00:27:47,320 --> 00:27:49,160
or the other side.
522
00:27:49,160 --> 00:27:54,200
Either matching the response key or conflicting with it.
523
00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:59,600
And overriding that position cue is incredibly difficult.
524
00:27:59,600 --> 00:28:05,080
You need a lot of control because the stimulus flashes on,
525
00:28:05,080 --> 00:28:09,520
and you automatically want to respond to the flashing
526
00:28:09,520 --> 00:28:10,720
stimulus.
527
00:28:10,720 --> 00:28:14,720
It's a much faster response than stopping
528
00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:18,280
to decide what color it is and then which key you need to press.
529
00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:21,120
So, this is a well-known effect, the Simon effect.
530
00:28:21,120 --> 00:28:25,320
And the basic idea is that the difference
531
00:28:25,320 --> 00:28:29,840
between your reaction time to respond
532
00:28:29,840 --> 00:28:33,760
to the congruent case where it's a red box
533
00:28:33,760 --> 00:28:34,800
and it's on the right,
534
00:28:34,800 --> 00:28:40,880
and that's the right key versus a red box on the left,
535
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:42,920
where you still have to press the right key.
536
00:28:42,920 --> 00:28:47,560
The difference in time is the Simon effect.
537
00:28:47,560 --> 00:28:53,280
So, we did this, and we found that in both groups,
538
00:28:53,280 --> 00:29:00,160
the Simon effect cost was much greater for the monolinguls.
539
00:29:00,160 --> 00:29:05,000
So, the bilinguals could resolve that conflict,
540
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:10,120
avoid the pull of the position, and respond correctly
541
00:29:10,120 --> 00:29:12,200
for much longer.
542
00:29:12,200 --> 00:29:15,160
So that was the first time this had been reported.
543
00:29:15,160 --> 00:29:17,960
And it got a lot of attention.
544
00:29:17,960 --> 00:29:18,280
Yeah.
545
00:29:18,280 --> 00:29:21,080
And it's an extremely strong effect in your paper.
546
00:29:21,080 --> 00:29:23,040
And as you mentioned, like you wonder,
547
00:29:23,040 --> 00:29:26,440
if you didn't get quite a strong and effect later,
548
00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:27,640
what kind of issues do you think
549
00:29:27,640 --> 00:29:30,600
that could have been with that first paper that led
550
00:29:30,600 --> 00:29:32,480
to such a striking finding?
551
00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:32,720
Yeah.
552
00:29:32,720 --> 00:29:36,040
I think there was something about the parameters
553
00:29:36,040 --> 00:29:38,400
we were using in the design.
554
00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:39,520
I don't know.
555
00:29:39,520 --> 00:29:44,560
We've replicated the effect just not as large.
556
00:29:44,560 --> 00:29:45,920
Mm-hmm.
557
00:29:45,920 --> 00:29:48,200
I mean, were the groups, were the monolinguals and bilinguals
558
00:29:48,200 --> 00:29:50,200
like similar in other respects?
559
00:29:50,200 --> 00:29:51,280
Maybe not.
560
00:29:51,280 --> 00:29:55,440
I maybe, you know, there, anything you don't control carefully
561
00:29:55,440 --> 00:29:58,200
enough can influence the results.
562
00:29:58,200 --> 00:30:01,960
And so, you know, maybe one day I should go back
563
00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:06,280
and dig up those data and see if I can figure out why the effect
564
00:30:06,280 --> 00:30:08,280
was so large.
565
00:30:08,280 --> 00:30:11,440
But maybe if the effect hadn't been so large,
566
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:14,280
it would not have caught the attention of so masny people (Laughter)
567
00:30:14,280 --> 00:30:15,880
Who knows… (Laughter)
568
00:30:15,880 --> 00:30:16,480
569
00:30:16,480 --> 00:30:18,640
So maybe it's like the Peal and Lambert study.
570
00:30:18,640 --> 00:30:20,080
Like even if it wasn't perfect,
571
00:30:20,080 --> 00:30:21,760
it set the field in a helpful direction.
572
00:30:21,760 --> 00:30:23,160
That's a very good point.
573
00:30:23,160 --> 00:30:25,800
Yeah, that's what you all wanted to say, right?
574
00:30:25,800 --> 00:30:28,160
So, yeah, I mean, there's been like, you know,
575
00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:31,560
20 years of work since then, many replications,
576
00:30:31,560 --> 00:30:34,480
some failed replications we can talk about.
577
00:30:34,480 --> 00:30:39,960
But it's not like it's been just left there to stand on its own.
578
00:30:39,960 --> 00:30:44,720
So next, I wanted to talk about the 2007 paper,
579
00:30:44,720 --> 00:30:47,360
because especially with respect to people who
580
00:30:47,360 --> 00:30:50,240
listen to my podcast, it's about language and the brain.
581
00:30:50,240 --> 00:30:54,120
So, this is like the brainiest of your papers
582
00:30:54,120 --> 00:30:57,840
because it's got people with dementia.
583
00:30:57,840 --> 00:31:01,840
So, can you tell us about that 2007 paper
584
00:31:01,840 --> 00:31:03,400
and what you found there?
585
00:31:03,400 --> 00:31:07,920
Yeah, so actually, it's a perfect segue
586
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:10,200
from what we're just talking about.
587
00:31:10,200 --> 00:31:13,520
When the 2004 paper was published,
588
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:19,320
I got non-stop calls from international press, hundreds
589
00:31:19,320 --> 00:31:26,600
and hundreds of reporters wanted to talk about that study.
590
00:31:26,600 --> 00:31:28,680
And I mean, this, like, you know,
591
00:31:28,680 --> 00:31:31,160
Reuters called me and it was in all their papers,
592
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:33,360
AP called me, it was in all their papers.
593
00:31:33,360 --> 00:31:37,320
So, there was huge amount of press.
594
00:31:37,320 --> 00:31:45,440
And every single science writer I spoke to, asked the same question.
595
00:31:45,440 --> 00:31:49,480
Do you think this is helpful for dementia?
596
00:31:49,480 --> 00:31:54,920
And I had to say, like, 400 times, I have no idea.
597
00:31:54,920 --> 00:31:57,000
All of our participants were healthy.
598
00:31:57,000 --> 00:32:00,040
If they weren't healthy and cognitively OK,
599
00:32:00,040 --> 00:32:02,000
they wouldn't have been in a study.
600
00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:04,760
I have no idea.
601
00:32:04,760 --> 00:32:08,760
But science writers are very smart.
602
00:32:08,760 --> 00:32:10,920
And most of them are PhDs in science.
603
00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:15,560
It's a really highly educated group at the highest level.
604
00:32:15,560 --> 00:32:21,200
So, when 300 science writers ask you the same question,
605
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:22,360
you've got to pay attention.
606
00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:25,440
Yeah, you're like, that's the next question to work on.
607
00:32:25,440 --> 00:32:28,440
Uh-huh.
608
00:32:28,440 --> 00:32:34,720
And so, since I was already at this geriatric hospital,
609
00:32:34,720 --> 00:32:43,920
and already had access to the clinic and people who knew how to do this,
610
00:32:43,920 --> 00:32:48,080
we set up the study with the clinic.
611
00:32:48,080 --> 00:32:53,800
And the first study in that 2007 paper was very simply,
612
00:32:53,800 --> 00:32:56,880
we went through the clinic records.
613
00:32:56,880 --> 00:33:01,400
And Toronto is very, very diverse.
614
00:33:01,400 --> 00:33:05,840
You know, you just dip your hand into the population,
615
00:33:05,840 --> 00:33:10,480
and half the people you grab will be bilingual, always.
616
00:33:10,480 --> 00:33:12,320
It's just that diverse.
617
00:33:12,320 --> 00:33:17,440
So, our first study, we thought all we're going to do
618
00:33:17,440 --> 00:33:19,720
is see if there's anything there.
619
00:33:19,720 --> 00:33:22,000
So, we went through the clinic records,
620
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:29,640
and we pulled out files for people who had no or few,
621
00:33:29,640 --> 00:33:33,720
because there's no, everybody has co-morbidities.
622
00:33:33,720 --> 00:33:38,360
But we pulled out as much as possible clear diagnoses
623
00:33:38,360 --> 00:33:42,680
of dementia without a bunch of other stuff.
624
00:33:42,680 --> 00:33:50,760
We recorded education, background, socioeconomic stuff.
625
00:33:50,760 --> 00:33:53,200
You know, what was your occupation?
626
00:33:53,200 --> 00:33:57,160
And crucially, language history.
627
00:33:57,160 --> 00:34:01,880
And the only thing that we were interested in at that point,
628
00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:06,200
in that first study, was age of diagnosis.
629
00:34:06,200 --> 00:34:07,720
Yeah.
630
00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:12,680
That makes sense as a measure, because if bilingualism is protective
631
00:34:12,680 --> 00:34:16,440
in some sense, then you might expect
632
00:34:16,440 --> 00:34:19,240
that they would be diagnosed later.
633
00:34:19,240 --> 00:34:21,080
Before we talk about what you found,
634
00:34:21,080 --> 00:34:24,800
can you talk about, was it easy to characterize bilingual status
635
00:34:24,800 --> 00:34:28,240
based on the medical record? Was that information, well recorded?
636
00:34:28,240 --> 00:34:30,240
It was not easy.
637
00:34:30,240 --> 00:34:32,920
I can say that after our study, that hospital now
638
00:34:32,920 --> 00:34:36,000
collects full-language data for everything.
639
00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:39,320
So, that was a good legacy.
640
00:34:39,320 --> 00:34:41,800
It was not easy.
641
00:34:41,800 --> 00:34:45,320
And in fact, we went through hundreds of files
642
00:34:45,320 --> 00:34:49,640
that we could not use just because we weren't sure.
643
00:34:49,640 --> 00:34:56,080
So, we only ended up reporting the data from the files
644
00:34:56,080 --> 00:35:01,400
where we were really certain about the person's background.
645
00:35:01,400 --> 00:35:07,160
And the more ambiguous cases, we just didn't want that kind of mess,
646
00:35:07,160 --> 00:35:09,320
so, we didn't include them.
647
00:35:09,320 --> 00:35:15,280
So, these were clear cases of people we really believed were
648
00:35:15,280 --> 00:35:18,080
monolingual or bilingual.
649
00:35:18,080 --> 00:35:18,920
Uh-huh.
650
00:35:18,920 --> 00:35:20,880
And what did you find?
651
00:35:20,880 --> 00:35:25,040
We found that all else being equal,
652
00:35:25,040 --> 00:35:29,200
the age at which they were first diagnosed with dementia
653
00:35:29,200 --> 00:35:34,760
was four and a half years later in bilinguals.
654
00:35:34,760 --> 00:35:36,560
That's a very large effect size.
655
00:35:36,560 --> 00:35:37,680
It's huge.
656
00:35:37,680 --> 00:35:40,120
It's huge.
657
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:44,600
And so, you immediately must have wondered,
658
00:35:44,600 --> 00:35:49,400
and I know because you looked at the analyses from the paper,
659
00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:52,280
what differences between your groups could potentially
660
00:35:52,280 --> 00:35:55,080
explain that, apart from the difference
661
00:35:55,080 --> 00:35:57,440
that you think it is, which is the bilingualism difference?
662
00:35:57,440 --> 00:35:58,960
So, what kind of things did you investigate?
663
00:35:58,960 --> 00:36:00,240
Well, so we looked at a lot of that.
664
00:36:00,240 --> 00:36:03,600
We looked at all kinds of things about their lifestyle.
665
00:36:03,600 --> 00:36:09,680
Right after that paper came out, a group in India
666
00:36:09,680 --> 00:36:14,280
where they have a much larger population, thought,
667
00:36:14,280 --> 00:36:17,560
oh, that's really interesting, but I wonder if it holds up.
668
00:36:17,560 --> 00:36:21,120
So, they just followed our methodology in their clinic
669
00:36:21,120 --> 00:36:23,040
and they had like 1,000 patients.
670
00:36:23,040 --> 00:36:25,040
Are you talking about Alladi et al., 2013.
671
00:36:25,040 --> 00:36:26,360
Alladi and Bak
672
00:36:26,360 --> 00:36:27,360
Yeah.
673
00:36:27,360 --> 00:36:28,760
Alladi and Bak.
674
00:36:28,760 --> 00:36:30,320
Suvarna Alladi.
675
00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:33,000
She was the neurologist in this clinic.
676
00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:35,720
Thomas Bak is the neurologist also,
677
00:36:35,720 --> 00:36:38,680
but he worked in Edinburgh.
678
00:36:38,680 --> 00:36:40,720
So, they collaborate on this study,
679
00:36:40,720 --> 00:36:42,960
and they had almost 1,000 patients.
680
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:46,760
And they found in their sample that bilingual patients
681
00:36:46,760 --> 00:36:51,720
were diagnosed for 4 and a half years later than monolinguals.
682
00:36:51,720 --> 00:36:53,440
Replicated exactly.
683
00:36:53,440 --> 00:36:58,120
There's now like 20 studies from all over the world
684
00:36:58,120 --> 00:36:59,600
that have that result.
685
00:36:59,600 --> 00:37:04,400
So, it just replicates all over the place.
686
00:37:04,400 --> 00:37:06,600
Yeah, there's definitely…
687
00:37:06,600 --> 00:37:12,600
it's definitely a lot of people have run that basic design.
688
00:37:12,600 --> 00:37:17,480
So, what kind of factors did you look at in yours?
689
00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:21,840
Like you looked at education, immigrant status.
690
00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:24,120
How did your groups, do you remember how
691
00:37:24,120 --> 00:37:26,080
your groups compared on these kind of factors?
692
00:37:26,080 --> 00:37:29,800
Yeah, well, as much as possible, they were similar.
693
00:37:29,800 --> 00:37:35,600
In fact, I remember that the monolinguals had more education
694
00:37:35,600 --> 00:37:37,760
than the bilinguals.
695
00:37:37,760 --> 00:37:40,320
But I had a story about why that was the case.
696
00:37:40,320 --> 00:37:46,040
And the reason is that this hospital is a Jewish hospital,
697
00:37:46,040 --> 00:37:51,960
most of the older bilinguals arrived after the war.
698
00:37:51,960 --> 00:37:57,720
And they didn't go to high school because of life.
699
00:37:57,720 --> 00:38:00,760
So, they were stuck in war-torn Europe,
700
00:38:00,760 --> 00:38:04,320
or they survived the war, and then they immigrated.
701
00:38:04,320 --> 00:38:09,520
So, the number of formal years of education in that group
702
00:38:09,520 --> 00:38:12,360
was significantly less than the monolinguals,
703
00:38:12,360 --> 00:38:14,720
but not because they weren't smart people.
704
00:38:14,720 --> 00:38:15,240
Yeah, exactly.
705
00:38:15,240 --> 00:38:17,560
No, that was striking when I read your paper.
706
00:38:17,560 --> 00:38:20,520
I was like, OK, this potential education
707
00:38:20,520 --> 00:38:22,480
confound goes in the wrong direction.
708
00:38:22,480 --> 00:38:25,800
I mean, it goes in, it doesn't help.
709
00:38:25,800 --> 00:38:29,080
Yeah, it's not a confound that would explain it.
710
00:38:29,080 --> 00:38:31,640
But your bilinguals were mostly immigrants,
711
00:38:31,640 --> 00:38:32,840
and your monolinguals mostly non-immigrants.
712
00:38:32,840 --> 00:38:33,680
Yeah, right.
713
00:38:33,680 --> 00:38:36,880
So, immigrants, people latched onto that,
714
00:38:36,880 --> 00:38:39,680
or the healthy immigrant effect.
715
00:38:39,680 --> 00:38:42,240
But in India, none of them were immigrants,
716
00:38:42,240 --> 00:38:44,800
and in many of the other replications,
717
00:38:44,800 --> 00:38:46,920
none of them were immigrants.
718
00:38:46,920 --> 00:38:51,400
So, it is the case that our bilinguals are usually immigrants,
719
00:38:51,400 --> 00:38:54,440
and we try to control for that.
720
00:38:54,440 --> 00:38:59,120
We did subset analyses where we only looked at non-immigrants.
721
00:38:59,120 --> 00:39:03,560
So, native bilinguals and native monolinguals,
722
00:39:03,560 --> 00:39:05,400
we got the same result.
723
00:39:05,400 --> 00:39:06,240
So, we tried.
724
00:39:06,240 --> 00:39:09,640
We tried to see if there was a confound.
725
00:39:09,640 --> 00:39:10,640
Yeah, definitely.
726
00:39:10,640 --> 00:39:13,120
It's clear that you were addressing this question
727
00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:14,280
from the outset.
728
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:16,400
I mean, when you say the healthy immigrant effect,
729
00:39:16,400 --> 00:39:18,720
just to flesh that out for people that haven't been
730
00:39:18,720 --> 00:39:23,000
thinking about it for 20 years, what's the idea there?
731
00:39:23,000 --> 00:39:25,800
Well, I'm only saying that because we
732
00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:27,720
were told that this is a thing.
733
00:39:27,720 --> 00:39:28,240
OK.
734
00:39:28,240 --> 00:39:32,120
I was never heard of it until someone published a critique
735
00:39:32,120 --> 00:39:34,240
of actually, our next paper.
736
00:39:34,240 --> 00:39:38,040
I think the next paper was a more important paper.
737
00:39:38,040 --> 00:39:40,680
It was a more careful study.
738
00:39:40,680 --> 00:39:45,080
So, we went into a different hospital.
739
00:39:45,080 --> 00:39:48,040
And here the question was, what's going on?
740
00:39:48,040 --> 00:39:50,640
How come these bilinguals are older?
741
00:39:50,640 --> 00:39:51,160
So…
742
00:39:51,160 --> 00:39:53,600
Sorry, just for my second keep track.
743
00:39:53,600 --> 00:39:55,600
Are you talking about Schweizer et al., 2012?
744
00:39:55,600 --> 00:39:56,120
Yes. Yes. You are good. (Laughter)
745
00:39:56,120 --> 00:39:56,280
746
00:39:56,280 --> 00:39:57,080
747
00:39:57,080 --> 00:39:57,680
748
00:39:57,680 --> 00:39:58,200
749
00:39:58,200 --> 00:39:59,200
750
00:39:59,200 --> 00:39:59,800
751
00:39:59,800 --> 00:40:00,800
You read this.
752
00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:04,160
So, Schweizer, he's a neuropsychologist.
753
00:40:04,160 --> 00:40:07,120
And working in a different hospital.
754
00:40:07,120 --> 00:40:11,800
And here we turn the question around.
755
00:40:11,800 --> 00:40:17,880
So, what we wanted to do was look directly
756
00:40:17,880 --> 00:40:23,240
at the Alzheimer's neuropathology in monolingual
757
00:40:23,240 --> 00:40:25,960
and bilingual patients.
758
00:40:25,960 --> 00:40:30,800
So, this study was really carefully controlled.
759
00:40:30,800 --> 00:40:38,520
We took Alzheimer's patients from their clinic
760
00:40:38,520 --> 00:40:41,800
at this different hospital, St. Michael's Hospital.
761
00:40:41,800 --> 00:40:49,560
And we matched them on chronological age.
762
00:40:49,560 --> 00:40:54,160
So, we're not looking for bilinguals to be older.
763
00:40:54,160 --> 00:40:56,080
We're looking for
764
00:40:56,080 --> 00:40:58,400
because brains change, right?
765
00:40:58,400 --> 00:40:59,360
Brains change.
766
00:40:59,360 --> 00:41:04,400
So, we want them to be the same chronological age.
767
00:41:04,400 --> 00:41:09,000
We also wanted them to be at the same level
768
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:14,720
of Alzheimer's pathology, clinically, clinical domain.
769
00:41:14,720 --> 00:41:18,400
So, their clinical levels were the same.
770
00:41:18,400 --> 00:41:25,600
So, if these pairs of people presented to a neurologist,
771
00:41:25,600 --> 00:41:29,320
the neurologist would not see anything different between them
772
00:41:29,320 --> 00:41:31,560
in all of the behavioral measures,
773
00:41:31,560 --> 00:41:35,760
in all of the background measures, in the demographics,
774
00:41:35,760 --> 00:41:39,200
they were matched for education and SES.
775
00:41:39,200 --> 00:41:42,000
They were completely matched.
776
00:41:42,000 --> 00:41:43,960
And then we looked at their brains.
777
00:41:43,960 --> 00:41:52,120
We had CT scans of their brains.
778
00:41:52,120 --> 00:41:57,360
And if you, and these were early Alzheimer's patients,
779
00:41:57,360 --> 00:42:03,560
so, the main accumulation of the beta-amyloid
780
00:42:03,560 --> 00:42:07,600
and all of their problems are in the hippocampal area,
781
00:42:07,600 --> 00:42:11,720
In the temporal lobe, which is why memory goes first.
782
00:42:11,720 --> 00:42:17,760
And when we compared side by side the CT scans
783
00:42:17,760 --> 00:42:20,200
for the monolinguals and bilinguals,
784
00:42:20,200 --> 00:42:24,800
the bilinguals had significantly more deterioration.
785
00:42:24,800 --> 00:42:26,200
They had worse brains.
786
00:42:26,200 --> 00:42:26,700
Yeah.
787
00:42:26,700 --> 00:42:29,220
The pathology was more advanced.
788
00:42:29,220 --> 00:42:33,860
And yet despite the pathology being more advanced,
789
00:42:33,860 --> 00:42:39,380
they presented at the same level as these monolinguals
790
00:42:39,380 --> 00:42:42,260
with less advanced disease.
791
00:42:42,260 --> 00:42:42,760
Yes.
792
00:42:42,760 --> 00:42:43,100
OK.
793
00:42:43,100 --> 00:42:46,700
So that really brings home your interpretation, right?
794
00:42:46,700 --> 00:42:49,500
You're not saying that bilingualism stops the brain
795
00:42:49,500 --> 00:42:52,180
from undergoing pathological process of aging.
796
00:42:52,180 --> 00:42:55,220
You're saying that a bilingual brain is better
797
00:42:55,220 --> 00:42:59,260
positioned to handle the pathological changes of aging,
798
00:42:59,260 --> 00:43:00,320
yeah?
799
00:43:00,320 --> 00:43:01,580
Exactly.
800
00:43:01,580 --> 00:43:03,780
That's exactly right.
801
00:43:03,780 --> 00:43:06,260
And then that's why it's important
802
00:43:06,260 --> 00:43:13,260
to distinguish between age of onset studies
803
00:43:13,260 --> 00:43:17,660
like this and incidence studies.
804
00:43:17,660 --> 00:43:21,260
So, some people turn to incidence studies and say, look,
805
00:43:21,260 --> 00:43:24,260
bilinguals are getting Alzheimer's.
806
00:43:24,260 --> 00:43:26,020
Of course they are.
807
00:43:26,020 --> 00:43:31,780
It doesn't stop the pathology, but it gives resources
808
00:43:31,780 --> 00:43:36,660
for the individual to cope with the pathology
809
00:43:36,660 --> 00:43:43,620
and hold on to better cognitive functioning for longer.
810
00:43:43,620 --> 00:43:44,300
Right.
811
00:43:44,300 --> 00:43:45,180
Yeah.
812
00:43:45,180 --> 00:43:49,620
So, I think that it's probably a fair
813
00:43:49,620 --> 00:43:51,660
I'm not sure, correct me if I'm wrong,
814
00:43:51,660 --> 00:43:52,860
but my reading of the literature
815
00:43:52,860 --> 00:43:56,260
Is, there's quite a few solid replications
816
00:43:56,260 --> 00:43:57,740
that use a similar approach to you
817
00:43:57,740 --> 00:43:59,940
where you look at age of onset.
818
00:43:59,940 --> 00:44:02,900
And then there's several large longitudinal studies
819
00:44:02,900 --> 00:44:06,540
that often don't replicate your finding,
820
00:44:06,540 --> 00:44:07,900
and they don't find difference between
821
00:44:07,900 --> 00:44:09,620
monolingual and bilingual groups.
822
00:44:09,620 --> 00:44:12,420
And you've made the case that,
823
00:44:12,420 --> 00:44:14,940
I mean, you've basically pointed out
824
00:44:14,940 --> 00:44:16,820
flaws in those longitudinal studies,
825
00:44:16,820 --> 00:44:18,700
including what you just said.
826
00:44:18,700 --> 00:44:21,260
It's not that you're saying that you'll never get dementia.
827
00:44:21,260 --> 00:44:24,100
It's that it'll be later.
828
00:44:24,100 --> 00:44:26,860
But yeah, so I think like--
829
00:44:26,860 --> 00:44:30,300
to me, one of the most strongest longitudinal studies
830
00:44:30,300 --> 00:44:33,580
that I read was the Zahodne et al., 2014.
831
00:44:33,580 --> 00:44:36,180
I'm sure you read it because you've written about it.
832
00:44:36,180 --> 00:44:38,660
And I found that study interesting to talk about,
833
00:44:38,660 --> 00:44:42,340
because I think it's a good study that doesn't support
834
00:44:42,340 --> 00:44:45,140
your findings, but also does have some silver linings
835
00:44:45,140 --> 00:44:47,220
for your perspective at the same time.
836
00:44:47,220 --> 00:44:49,340
But this study totally supports it.
837
00:44:49,340 --> 00:44:50,700
OK, so tell us about that.
838
00:44:50,700 --> 00:44:51,200
Yeah.
839
00:44:51,200 --> 00:44:52,780
There are two things about that study.
840
00:44:52,780 --> 00:44:55,180
First of all, there were no monolinguals.
841
00:44:55,180 --> 00:44:56,940
They say there were, but they weren't.
842
00:44:56,940 --> 00:45:00,300
The study was done in New York City in Spanish Harlem.
843
00:45:00,300 --> 00:45:02,700
People lived there for 50 years.
844
00:45:02,700 --> 00:45:07,260
And in the study, they were designated as Spanish monolingual.
845
00:45:07,260 --> 00:45:10,460
So, after 50 years, you're going to pick up something.
846
00:45:10,460 --> 00:45:12,460
So, there really were no monolinguals.
847
00:45:12,460 --> 00:45:15,100
But more importantly than that, they
848
00:45:15,100 --> 00:45:18,180
designed it as an incidence study.
849
00:45:18,180 --> 00:45:20,700
And there was no difference in incidence.
850
00:45:20,700 --> 00:45:25,340
But deep buried in the paper is the fact
851
00:45:25,340 --> 00:45:30,140
that the bilinguals were older when they were diagnosed.
852
00:45:30,140 --> 00:45:36,340
Yeah, that's true in the simple model with no variance.
853
00:45:36,340 --> 00:45:37,260
They were older.
854
00:45:37,260 --> 00:45:38,340
And that's all I'm saying.
855
00:45:38,340 --> 00:45:42,500
They're going to be older, not that they're not going to succumb.
856
00:45:42,500 --> 00:45:46,780
But they're going to be older when it becomes diapparent
857
00:45:46,780 --> 00:45:48,380
and then diagnosed.
858
00:45:48,380 --> 00:45:51,460
Yeah, the study, just to fill in people
859
00:45:51,460 --> 00:45:56,660
that haven't read it recently, you would have read it
860
00:45:56,660 --> 00:45:57,180
a while ago.
861
00:45:57,180 --> 00:45:59,260
I've read it recently.
862
00:45:59,260 --> 00:46:02,740
So, the immigrants came from Latin America,
863
00:46:02,740 --> 00:46:05,300
and they were all native Spanish speakers,
864
00:46:05,300 --> 00:46:07,300
and they varied in their English speaking ability.
865
00:46:07,300 --> 00:46:08,300
And that was their contrast.
866
00:46:08,300 --> 00:46:10,740
It was people that said that they spoke English well,
867
00:46:10,740 --> 00:46:12,420
all the way down to people who said they spoke English,
868
00:46:12,420 --> 00:46:13,300
not at all.
869
00:46:13,300 --> 00:46:14,700
Your point is that, well, if you've
870
00:46:14,700 --> 00:46:17,580
been in America for like 30, 40 years,
871
00:46:17,580 --> 00:46:21,220
you probably don't speak English not at all.
872
00:46:21,220 --> 00:46:25,420
So yes, it's not the same kind of contrast that you've made.
873
00:46:25,420 --> 00:46:29,820
But yeah, there was definitely trends in their data
874
00:46:29,820 --> 00:46:32,340
that the more bilingual,
875
00:46:32,340 --> 00:46:33,700
that's kind of same more bilingual.
876
00:46:33,700 --> 00:46:37,500
The more bilingual individuals did better.
877
00:46:37,500 --> 00:46:39,460
Well, they definitely did better on memory and executive
878
00:46:39,460 --> 00:46:40,300
function, interestingly.
879
00:46:40,300 --> 00:46:41,100
Yeah, they did.
880
00:46:41,100 --> 00:46:47,060
I don't think their paper contradict anything that I've said.
881
00:46:47,060 --> 00:46:49,620
I think it, well, I mean, it wasn't statistically
882
00:46:49,620 --> 00:46:53,260
significant for the thing that you care about the most.
883
00:46:53,260 --> 00:46:56,260
But there was a trend in that direction.
884
00:46:56,260 --> 00:47:00,580
And there was, yeah, there were significant effects
885
00:47:00,580 --> 00:47:03,020
on memory and executive function in their bilingual.
886
00:47:03,020 --> 00:47:04,500
So, I think it had a lot of,
887
00:47:04,500 --> 00:47:06,300
I think it's an, I brought it up because I think it's
888
00:47:06,300 --> 00:47:10,100
an example of a non-replication that nevertheless has
889
00:47:10,100 --> 00:47:12,100
a lot of silver linings if you…
890
00:47:12,100 --> 00:47:14,700
I've never thought that was…
891
00:47:14,700 --> 00:47:17,980
I thought the way they wrote it up and pitched, interpreted
892
00:47:17,980 --> 00:47:22,060
their results, was problematic for what I'm saying.
893
00:47:22,060 --> 00:47:24,220
But I never thought their data were.
894
00:47:24,220 --> 00:47:25,940
Yeah, no, it's a well done study.
895
00:47:25,940 --> 00:47:28,340
And they just, yeah, they just took a different…
896
00:47:28,340 --> 00:47:29,580
yeah, they went a different direction
897
00:47:29,580 --> 00:47:30,380
with their interpretation.
898
00:47:30,380 --> 00:47:32,580
Yaakov Stern, he is the best, right?
899
00:47:32,580 --> 00:47:35,100
He knows how to do this stuff.
900
00:47:35,100 --> 00:47:40,380
But, so I think there's a lot of issues there that
901
00:47:40,380 --> 00:47:43,100
need to be taken into account.
902
00:47:43,100 --> 00:47:44,660
Yeah, no, for sure.
903
00:47:44,660 --> 00:47:48,180
I mean, yeah, so you brought up earlier
904
00:47:48,180 --> 00:47:51,620
like your, later, your current perspective
905
00:47:51,620 --> 00:47:53,340
on how this all works, right?
906
00:47:53,340 --> 00:47:56,740
So maybe you'd be great to circle back to that now.
907
00:47:56,740 --> 00:47:58,900
Like, so we've kind of, we're in this situation
908
00:47:58,900 --> 00:48:01,940
where you've made these seminal findings.
909
00:48:01,940 --> 00:48:04,420
They've been discussed.
910
00:48:04,420 --> 00:48:07,500
Obviously, people have got different perspectives.
911
00:48:07,500 --> 00:48:11,660
And then now you're in this recent TICS paper
912
00:48:11,660 --> 00:48:13,660
that you were mentioning before…
913
00:48:13,660 --> 00:48:15,980
I'm talking about before…
914
00:48:15,980 --> 00:48:18,780
you've kind of started to sharpen, I'd
915
00:48:18,780 --> 00:48:22,340
say, your theory of how bilingualism
916
00:48:22,340 --> 00:48:24,620
confers an advantage.
917
00:48:24,620 --> 00:48:26,700
Would you say that, is that like in response
918
00:48:26,700 --> 00:48:29,740
to the 20 years of literature, or is it just really
919
00:48:29,740 --> 00:48:32,900
your own thinking evolving over time?
920
00:48:32,900 --> 00:48:34,460
Oh, it's both, really.
921
00:48:34,460 --> 00:48:40,020
I mean, you know, you're always responding to what's out there.
922
00:48:40,020 --> 00:48:42,580
Well, can I just add one more thing
923
00:48:42,580 --> 00:48:45,300
before we leave the Alzheimer's piece.
924
00:48:45,300 --> 00:48:48,420
There was one other study we did that I thought
925
00:48:48,420 --> 00:48:51,860
was a really important piece of the argument.
926
00:48:51,860 --> 00:48:53,100
It's a study I did
927
00:48:53,100 --> 00:48:54,700
I don't remember when it was published.
928
00:48:54,700 --> 00:48:59,340
The first author was my student, Matthias Berkes.
929
00:48:59,340 --> 00:49:02,220
And what he showed, he was also done
930
00:49:02,220 --> 00:49:08,940
through records, he showed that monolinguals and bilingual.
931
00:49:08,940 --> 00:49:12,420
We've talked about how bilinguals hold on longer,
932
00:49:12,420 --> 00:49:17,540
diagnosed later, have worse brains for the same cognitive level.
933
00:49:17,540 --> 00:49:24,420
But then, when they inevitably decline, it's more precipitous.
934
00:49:24,420 --> 00:49:28,460
And that makes perfect sense if the idea is they've
935
00:49:28,460 --> 00:49:31,420
been holding back the dam.
936
00:49:31,420 --> 00:49:33,660
You can only do it for so long.
937
00:49:33,660 --> 00:49:38,140
So, what have bilinguals been doing before they were diagnosed,
938
00:49:38,140 --> 00:49:40,500
you know, all that stuff?
939
00:49:40,500 --> 00:49:46,660
Their minds and brains have been somehow compensating, coping
940
00:49:46,660 --> 00:49:49,700
in ways that they could only do up to a point.
941
00:49:49,700 --> 00:49:53,180
So that's the bilingualism piece.
942
00:49:53,180 --> 00:49:55,900
So, what did you guys find in that paper about the rate
943
00:49:55,900 --> 00:49:56,420
of decline?
944
00:49:56,420 --> 00:49:57,580
Can you just clarify that?
945
00:49:57,580 --> 00:49:59,980
Yeah, the rate of, we looked at,
946
00:49:59,980 --> 00:50:02,660
we took rate to be the time it took
947
00:50:02,660 --> 00:50:11,100
to go from a visual diagnosis of MCI to full-blown Alzheimer's.
948
00:50:11,100 --> 00:50:16,460
And it was significantly shorter for the bilinguals.
949
00:50:16,460 --> 00:50:22,420
So, once they're on the train, the decline was steeper.
950
00:50:22,420 --> 00:50:24,340
OK, that's fascinating.
951
00:50:24,340 --> 00:50:28,100
So why do you think the advantage didn't continue to haul?
952
00:50:28,100 --> 00:50:31,060
Like, it's almost like after the dam burst,
953
00:50:31,060 --> 00:50:32,340
there was no longer an advantage.
954
00:50:32,340 --> 00:50:33,780
And the monolinguals caught up.
955
00:50:33,780 --> 00:50:36,540
Or did they not fully catch up?
956
00:50:36,540 --> 00:50:38,740
I think everybody meets at an end point.
957
00:50:38,740 --> 00:50:40,020
Everybody meets an end point.
958
00:50:40,020 --> 00:50:43,540
But do the bilinguals remain preserved at…
959
00:50:43,540 --> 00:50:44,860
Up and up to a point.
960
00:50:44,860 --> 00:50:50,740
The early and mid-stages of the disease, they do.
961
00:50:50,740 --> 00:50:56,020
We tried at one point testing more advanced patients,
962
00:50:56,020 --> 00:50:57,300
but it was impossible.
963
00:50:57,300 --> 00:50:57,800
Oh, yeah.
964
00:50:57,800 --> 00:51:00,260
So, the prediction is that once you get
965
00:51:00,260 --> 00:51:04,260
beyond the sort of moderate disease level,
966
00:51:04,260 --> 00:51:09,420
if you would be able to continue giving them detailed tests,
967
00:51:09,420 --> 00:51:14,260
the bilingual gap would close down because they're catching up.
968
00:51:14,260 --> 00:51:15,740
That's the prediction.
969
00:51:15,740 --> 00:51:17,060
But it was terrible.
970
00:51:17,060 --> 00:51:20,420
I mean, we had one time a wonderful research assistant,
971
00:51:20,420 --> 00:51:23,020
and we sent her into people's homes,
972
00:51:23,020 --> 00:51:25,660
where there was a patient with Alzheimer's
973
00:51:25,660 --> 00:51:28,340
and she had all these tests she was supposed to give them.
974
00:51:28,340 --> 00:51:29,580
It was hopeless. Couldn’t do them.
975
00:51:29,580 --> 00:51:31,380
Yeah.
976
00:51:31,380 --> 00:51:32,860
I mean, I understand.
977
00:51:32,860 --> 00:51:35,580
I mean, I did my postdoc in a dementia center,
978
00:51:35,580 --> 00:51:37,900
and it was very eye-opening.
979
00:51:37,900 --> 00:51:43,820
And yeah, it's a very difficult population to work with.
980
00:51:43,820 --> 00:51:46,140
Right now, I work primarily with Stroke,
981
00:51:46,140 --> 00:51:50,540
which is much more oddly a happy population to work with,
982
00:51:50,540 --> 00:51:52,900
because they're tending to be on a positive trajectory.
983
00:51:52,900 --> 00:51:54,140
They're on a positive trajectory. Yeah, they recover. Exactly.
984
00:51:54,140 --> 00:51:59,140
And yeah, and dementia that's certainly not the case.
985
00:51:59,140 --> 00:51:59,660
OK, yeah.
986
00:51:59,660 --> 00:52:03,700
So yeah, thanks for sharing that piece of the puzzle as well.
987
00:52:03,700 --> 00:52:07,380
I think that's an important part of the story.
988
00:52:07,380 --> 00:52:10,060
So maybe the last paper I'd like to talk about,
989
00:52:10,060 --> 00:52:12,140
yeah, you already mentioned it earlier.
990
00:52:12,140 --> 00:52:15,780
It's this recent TICS paper where you talk about mechanisms.
991
00:52:15,780 --> 00:52:17,980
And first of all, I mean, I kind of just
992
00:52:17,980 --> 00:52:23,420
wowed by the fact that you're still writing theoretical,
993
00:52:23,420 --> 00:52:26,900
After so long in this field, you are just not,
994
00:52:26,900 --> 00:52:27,740
you can't hold still.
995
00:52:27,740 --> 00:52:30,900
You're still like revising your views and so on.
996
00:52:30,900 --> 00:52:32,220
That's very cool.
997
00:52:32,220 --> 00:52:35,580
So, in this paper, you kind of contrast
998
00:52:35,580 --> 00:52:39,220
a transfer view of what the mechanism could be
999
00:52:39,220 --> 00:52:41,500
versus an adaptation view.
1000
00:52:41,500 --> 00:52:43,340
And I know you will mentioned this earlier,
1001
00:52:43,340 --> 00:52:45,380
but can you kind of flesh out those two possibilities
1002
00:52:45,380 --> 00:52:49,140
and explain why you come down on one side rather than the other?
1003
00:52:49,140 --> 00:52:50,220
OK.
1004
00:52:50,220 --> 00:52:56,060
So, when the research started accumulating,
1005
00:52:56,060 --> 00:52:59,420
and there was some interest in figuring out why bilinguals
1006
00:52:59,420 --> 00:53:04,100
are doing these asks better, executive function tasks,
1007
00:53:04,100 --> 00:53:07,300
better than, why would being bilingual
1008
00:53:07,300 --> 00:53:10,100
make you better at a Stroop task or a Simon task?
1009
00:53:10,100 --> 00:53:13,300
I mean, it doesn't really make a lot of sense.
1010
00:53:13,300 --> 00:53:18,660
So, in the, I guess early '80s to mid '80s,
1011
00:53:18,660 --> 00:53:23,340
there was a huge amount of psycholinguistic research
1012
00:53:23,340 --> 00:53:27,340
showing that both languages in a bilingual mind
1013
00:53:27,340 --> 00:53:28,700
are constantly active.
1014
00:53:28,700 --> 00:53:30,780
There's no language switch.
1015
00:53:30,780 --> 00:53:35,020
So, there's a constant need to select,
1016
00:53:35,020 --> 00:53:36,900
because bilinguals don't make mistakes.
1017
00:53:36,900 --> 00:53:39,900
They don't slip into the wrong language.
1018
00:53:39,900 --> 00:53:43,020
There is a constant need to select.
1019
00:53:43,020 --> 00:53:47,780
And people talked about that as inhibition.
1020
00:53:47,780 --> 00:53:52,180
And this was the language that these researchers were using
1021
00:53:52,180 --> 00:53:57,020
that bilinguals inhibit the unwanted language.
1022
00:53:57,020 --> 00:54:00,580
So, I thought, it just kind of made sense to me.
1023
00:54:00,580 --> 00:54:04,220
All right, they're inhibiting the unwanted language.
1024
00:54:04,220 --> 00:54:06,860
I'm not a linguist, again.
1025
00:54:06,860 --> 00:54:10,540
But when I see the performance on these tests,
1026
00:54:10,540 --> 00:54:16,220
like the Stroop task, you have to inhibit reading the word
1027
00:54:16,220 --> 00:54:19,940
in the Simon task that I described earlier.
1028
00:54:19,940 --> 00:54:24,220
You have to inhibit responding to the side
1029
00:54:24,220 --> 00:54:26,220
that's flashing with the stimulus.
1030
00:54:26,220 --> 00:54:29,900
So, I thought, maybe what's happening
1031
00:54:29,900 --> 00:54:37,380
is that constantly having to inhibit the non-target language
1032
00:54:37,380 --> 00:54:41,620
just makes bilinguals better at inhibition.
1033
00:54:41,620 --> 00:54:44,300
So that was my first guess.
1034
00:54:44,300 --> 00:54:48,220
I didn't think it was a terrible guess, but turns out to be wrong.
1035
00:54:48,220 --> 00:54:55,060
But anyway, I thought inhibition somehow is boosted,
1036
00:54:55,060 --> 00:55:00,420
and it's then more available no matter what you need to inhibit.
1037
00:55:00,420 --> 00:55:04,940
But then lots of stuff challenged that story.
1038
00:55:04,940 --> 00:55:07,900
The story didn't hold up for lots of reasons.
1039
00:55:07,900 --> 00:55:10,660
And we take too much time to go through it all.
1040
00:55:10,660 --> 00:55:11,460
Just briefly, though.
1041
00:55:11,460 --> 00:55:14,260
I think the important reasons, yeah.
1042
00:55:14,260 --> 00:55:14,900
All right.
1043
00:55:14,900 --> 00:55:17,140
So, here's a couple of examples.
1044
00:55:17,140 --> 00:55:24,780
I mentioned earlier that bilingualism begins
1045
00:55:24,780 --> 00:55:30,500
to impact mind and brain from the moment of birth.
1046
00:55:30,500 --> 00:55:35,660
There’re cool, cool studies with infants, six-month-old infants,
1047
00:55:35,660 --> 00:55:38,500
eight-month-old infants.
1048
00:55:38,500 --> 00:55:41,140
Infants don't speak.
1049
00:55:41,140 --> 00:55:44,220
They're not inhibiting anything.
1050
00:55:44,220 --> 00:55:50,860
So, it isn't just you try to tap down French,
1051
00:55:50,860 --> 00:55:52,620
because we're speaking English.
1052
00:55:52,620 --> 00:55:54,260
So, inhibition didn't work there.
1053
00:55:54,260 --> 00:56:01,420
Second, a lot of the studies first with children
1054
00:56:01,420 --> 00:56:05,100
and then with young adults showed that inhibition
1055
00:56:05,100 --> 00:56:07,540
isn't one thing anyway.
1056
00:56:07,540 --> 00:56:10,860
And so, if you're looking for differences
1057
00:56:10,860 --> 00:56:13,260
between monolinguals and bilinguals
1058
00:56:13,260 --> 00:56:18,540
and your hypothesis is that it's inhibition,
1059
00:56:18,540 --> 00:56:20,660
you're not going to find it all the time
1060
00:56:20,660 --> 00:56:23,260
because there's different kinds of inhibition.
1061
00:56:23,260 --> 00:56:30,700
And so, we then started to zoom in on a more detailed understanding
1062
00:56:30,700 --> 00:56:36,380
of what sort of inhibition in a task is handled better
1063
00:56:36,380 --> 00:56:37,380
by bilinguals.
1064
00:56:37,380 --> 00:56:41,620
So, inhibition is a big thing didn't work.
1065
00:56:41,620 --> 00:56:44,220
Then you get to the older adults.
1066
00:56:44,220 --> 00:56:48,940
Why would inhibiting a language all your life
1067
00:56:48,940 --> 00:56:54,140
help preserve your cognitive level in older age
1068
00:56:54,140 --> 00:56:56,860
and then into dementia?
1069
00:56:56,860 --> 00:56:58,980
Again, it didn't make any sense.
1070
00:56:58,980 --> 00:57:01,900
So, the inhibition story didn't hold together,
1071
00:57:01,900 --> 00:57:07,420
but that was the one that became adopted by the field.
1072
00:57:07,420 --> 00:57:08,660
And it is really easy.
1073
00:57:08,660 --> 00:57:10,340
I mean, you got all these students out there
1074
00:57:10,340 --> 00:57:12,220
and they have to do experiments.
1075
00:57:12,220 --> 00:57:14,540
So, they say, I'm going to give monolinguals
1076
00:57:14,540 --> 00:57:16,860
and bilinguals an inhibition task.
1077
00:57:16,860 --> 00:57:21,300
Oh, look, there's no difference because it was the wrong prediction.
1078
00:57:21,300 --> 00:57:24,420
So, inhibition took on a life of its own
1079
00:57:24,420 --> 00:57:29,500
and I tried to understand what was going on.
1080
00:57:29,500 --> 00:57:31,020
And I just--
1081
00:57:31,020 --> 00:57:33,740
Sorry, can I just make sure I'm understanding, right?
1082
00:57:33,740 --> 00:57:38,300
So, this view is like that the driving effect
1083
00:57:38,300 --> 00:57:43,380
is like the transfer of some skill from being bilingual
1084
00:57:43,380 --> 00:57:47,060
and the skill and question that the transfer is inhibition.
1085
00:57:47,060 --> 00:57:50,980
And if that's your view, then if that's not the explanation,
1086
00:57:50,980 --> 00:57:53,380
then that might actually explain some of the no results
1087
00:57:53,380 --> 00:57:56,940
from people who've argued against an advantage
1088
00:57:56,940 --> 00:58:01,020
for bilinguals in aging if I'm phrasing it OK.
1089
00:58:01,020 --> 00:58:02,940
Because they might be looking at things
1090
00:58:02,940 --> 00:58:05,700
where you actually wouldn't necessarily even predict
1091
00:58:05,700 --> 00:58:07,980
that the bilinguals' advantage would show itself.
1092
00:58:07,980 --> 00:58:09,860
So, you're going to have a different concept
1093
00:58:09,860 --> 00:58:12,740
of where the advantage comes from, if this is,
1094
00:58:12,740 --> 00:58:13,820
Exactly right.
1095
00:58:13,820 --> 00:58:17,580
And if inhibition isn't the thing, then you shouldn't expect
1096
00:58:17,580 --> 00:58:20,740
bilinguals to transfer inhibition to everything
1097
00:58:20,740 --> 00:58:23,300
you throw at them that happens to require
1098
00:58:23,300 --> 00:58:24,780
what you want to call inhibition.
1099
00:58:24,780 --> 00:58:25,620
OK, so…
1100
00:58:25,620 --> 00:58:30,900
So, looking in the wrong place, I now describe that as looking
1101
00:58:30,900 --> 00:58:32,460
in the wrong place.
1102
00:58:32,460 --> 00:58:33,700
It wasn't inhibition.
1103
00:58:33,700 --> 00:58:35,780
But there was something.
1104
00:58:35,780 --> 00:58:39,220
And it really started to make sense when we
1105
00:58:39,220 --> 00:58:41,380
added the brain science.
1106
00:58:41,380 --> 00:58:44,420
Because bilinguals,
1107
00:58:44,420 --> 00:58:47,660
I mean, there's a lot of stuff on structural differences
1108
00:58:47,660 --> 00:58:50,420
between monolingual and bilingual brains.
1109
00:58:50,420 --> 00:58:54,660
But I think the more important stuff is the functional stuff.
1110
00:58:54,660 --> 00:59:00,900
So once neuroimaging was added to these studies,
1111
00:59:00,900 --> 00:59:05,740
it was very clear that even if the behavioral results
1112
00:59:05,740 --> 00:59:12,700
were identical, the functional connectivity was not.
1113
00:59:12,700 --> 00:59:18,260
Bunch of EEG studies that clearly show whether or not
1114
00:59:18,260 --> 00:59:22,100
there are differences in accuracy and reaction time
1115
00:59:22,100 --> 00:59:28,620
bilinguals are performing these tasks with less effort.
1116
00:59:28,620 --> 00:59:34,300
It was less effortful, even if the behavioral outcomes
1117
00:59:34,300 --> 00:59:35,780
were the same.
1118
00:59:35,780 --> 00:59:40,220
And then you've got other studies with connectivity
1119
00:59:40,220 --> 00:59:45,500
in fMRI, white matter tracts, functional connectivity
1120
00:59:45,500 --> 00:59:47,900
at rest, really interesting stuff.
1121
00:59:47,900 --> 00:59:51,300
bilingual brains were wired differently.
1122
00:59:51,300 --> 00:59:53,180
Yeah, thank you, Daniela Perani's
1123
00:59:53,180 --> 00:59:54,460
work there, probably.
1124
00:59:54,460 --> 00:59:56,460
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
1125
00:59:56,460 --> 00:59:56,980
Yeah.
1126
00:59:56,980 --> 00:59:57,460
OK.
1127
00:59:57,460 --> 01:00:01,220
So, if the brain is wired differently,
1128
01:00:01,220 --> 01:00:05,420
it has a different level of preparedness
1129
01:00:05,420 --> 01:00:09,180
for the tasks in which it will engage.
1130
01:00:09,180 --> 01:00:11,980
So, the crucial thing is no longer
1131
01:00:11,980 --> 01:00:14,220
who can do a Stroop task faster.
1132
01:00:14,220 --> 01:00:15,780
That's not important.
1133
01:00:15,780 --> 01:00:20,660
The crucial thing is what does the preparedness of the brain
1134
01:00:20,660 --> 01:00:22,260
look like?
1135
01:00:22,260 --> 01:00:26,780
And this, I think, is the key to understanding
1136
01:00:26,780 --> 01:00:30,420
effects in older age and dementia.
1137
01:00:30,420 --> 01:00:34,820
The bilingual brain has better connectivity
1138
01:00:34,820 --> 01:00:40,980
and a more active state at rest.
1139
01:00:40,980 --> 01:00:45,540
And when it's doing a task, the EEG tells us
1140
01:00:45,540 --> 01:00:48,100
they don't have to try as hard.
1141
01:00:48,100 --> 01:00:52,140
So, this is a preservation on the brain
1142
01:00:52,140 --> 01:00:56,620
that takes them further into aging without losing
1143
01:00:56,620 --> 01:01:00,140
cognitive position.
1144
01:01:00,140 --> 01:01:02,900
OK, so that's the adaptation account
1145
01:01:02,900 --> 01:01:05,140
that the brain is that the bilingual environment
1146
01:01:05,140 --> 01:01:08,900
creates a more efficient, intentional system
1147
01:01:08,900 --> 01:01:11,460
that plays out in many different contexts,
1148
01:01:11,460 --> 01:01:13,580
not just in inhibition tasks.
1149
01:01:13,580 --> 01:01:18,500
And does it matter then, what kind of bilingual you are?
1150
01:01:18,500 --> 01:01:20,460
Like, is it better to be a simultaneous
1151
01:01:20,460 --> 01:01:22,740
bilingual or a sequential bilingual, for instance?
1152
01:01:22,740 --> 01:01:24,340
Like, what do you think about that?
1153
01:01:24,340 --> 01:01:24,940
Yeah.
1154
01:01:24,940 --> 01:01:28,300
So, this is also a big deal.
1155
01:01:28,300 --> 01:01:35,820
Because bilingualism is not a categorical concept, right?
1156
01:01:35,820 --> 01:01:40,220
And in the early studies we pretended it was,
1157
01:01:40,220 --> 01:01:43,860
the current research is much smarter
1158
01:01:43,860 --> 01:01:50,220
and treats it as a continuum with lots of ways
1159
01:01:50,220 --> 01:01:54,660
of measuring what moves you along the continuum.
1160
01:01:54,660 --> 01:01:59,220
So, lots of factors make bilingual experiences
1161
01:01:59,220 --> 01:02:04,860
across different people, age of onset, level of proficiency
1162
01:02:04,860 --> 01:02:07,500
who you speak to, in what context.
1163
01:02:07,500 --> 01:02:09,500
You know, all that matters.
1164
01:02:09,500 --> 01:02:11,940
And we haven't even talked about multilingualism, right?
1165
01:02:11,940 --> 01:02:14,660
I mean, that's not going to make it.
1166
01:02:14,660 --> 01:02:15,820
Let's not.
1167
01:02:15,820 --> 01:02:16,340
Not today.
1168
01:02:16,340 --> 01:02:21,620
The bottom line is bilingualism is a continuum
1169
01:02:21,620 --> 01:02:26,420
and degree of bilingualism matters greatly, depending,
1170
01:02:26,420 --> 01:02:28,380
you know, however you measure it.
1171
01:02:28,380 --> 01:02:32,700
And studies in the last five or so years
1172
01:02:32,700 --> 01:02:36,740
look at regressions or correlations
1173
01:02:36,740 --> 01:02:40,020
between degree of bilingualism and the outcomes.
1174
01:02:40,020 --> 01:02:46,340
So, it's calibrated to degree of bilingual experience.
1175
01:02:46,340 --> 01:02:49,740
OK, so the particular bilingual environment certainly
1176
01:02:49,740 --> 01:02:53,100
is going to matter according to this theory.
1177
01:02:53,100 --> 01:02:57,020
OK, I have one last question for you, if I may.
1178
01:02:57,020 --> 01:03:00,100
Do you think that, you know, given your findings,
1179
01:03:00,100 --> 01:03:02,500
do you think that a prospective intervention
1180
01:03:02,500 --> 01:03:08,300
would be worth exploring? Could learning a language later in life,
1181
01:03:08,300 --> 01:03:10,100
Specifically, because you want
1182
01:03:10,100 --> 01:03:12,540
to stave off dementia?
1183
01:03:12,540 --> 01:03:15,300
Is that a clinical trial that you'd like to see done?
1184
01:03:15,300 --> 01:03:16,060
Right.
1185
01:03:16,060 --> 01:03:18,660
So, I have two answers to your question.
1186
01:03:18,660 --> 01:03:23,500
First, we did a little training study that was very cute.
1187
01:03:23,500 --> 01:03:26,460
This was with the colleague of mine, Jed Meltzer.
1188
01:03:26,460 --> 01:03:28,500
So, we had older adults who were monolingual
1189
01:03:28,500 --> 01:03:29,820
when we trained them on stuff.
1190
01:03:29,820 --> 01:03:33,860
And by the end of the training study,
1191
01:03:33,860 --> 01:03:41,100
the group who spent 16 weeks learning Spanish on Duolingo
1192
01:03:41,100 --> 01:03:42,580
performed better on these tasks.
1193
01:03:42,580 --> 01:03:44,420
So that's kind of a demonstration.
1194
01:03:44,420 --> 01:03:45,900
But my real answer is,
1195
01:03:46,340 --> 01:03:51,980
what's hard for your brain is good for your brain.
1196
01:03:51,980 --> 01:03:55,420
So, to stave off dementia, we know all the things we need to do.
1197
01:03:55,420 --> 01:03:57,260
Everybody knows the list.
1198
01:03:57,260 --> 01:04:01,500
You've got to be active, engaged, busy, you've got to read,
1199
01:04:01,500 --> 01:04:05,020
you've got to do cross-word puzzles, you've got to do all these things.
1200
01:04:05,020 --> 01:04:08,980
And the reason is you've got to keep your brain alive.
1201
01:04:08,980 --> 01:04:15,060
So, bilingualism, learning a language in older age, is hard.
1202
01:04:15,060 --> 01:04:19,660
So, learning a language in older age is good for your brain.
1203
01:04:19,660 --> 01:04:21,980
But it will not make you bilingual.
1204
01:04:21,980 --> 01:04:24,980
It will be good for your brain just because it's
1205
01:04:24,980 --> 01:04:29,820
one of those activities that you need to keep doing to keep
1206
01:04:29,820 --> 01:04:32,580
your brain alive.
1207
01:04:32,580 --> 01:04:33,420
Yes, but…
1208
01:04:33,420 --> 01:04:37,460
OK, so you don't see that as creating a bilingual environment
1209
01:04:37,460 --> 01:04:42,620
of the sort that you theorize creates that lifelong protection.
1210
01:04:42,620 --> 01:04:47,220
Well, people want to know, it will help.
1211
01:04:47,220 --> 01:04:47,820
I mean…
1212
01:04:47,820 --> 01:04:48,860
Yeah, I understand.
1213
01:04:48,860 --> 01:04:49,860
That is there.
1214
01:04:49,860 --> 01:04:52,660
But people ask me this question because they
1215
01:04:52,660 --> 01:04:54,900
want to become bilingual.
1216
01:04:54,900 --> 01:04:57,620
And so, I think it just kind of be a little more realistic
1217
01:04:57,620 --> 01:05:01,540
about what's possible, but absolutely learn another languages.
1218
01:05:01,540 --> 01:05:03,180
But it's a great activity.
1219
01:05:03,180 --> 01:05:05,660
Yeah, but you don't, yeah.
1220
01:05:05,660 --> 01:05:09,260
And I guess what I'm saying is like you think it has virtue
1221
01:05:09,260 --> 01:05:12,620
but because it's cognitively challenging, but it doesn't create
1222
01:05:12,620 --> 01:05:15,260
the kind of bilingual brain that you're talking about
1223
01:05:15,260 --> 01:05:17,980
that would have that long term resilience built in.
1224
01:05:17,980 --> 01:05:18,980
Yes, that is it.
1225
01:05:18,980 --> 01:05:24,100
OK, so it's too late for all of us that have failed to become bilingual
1226
01:05:24,100 --> 01:05:26,460
when we had the chance.
1227
01:05:26,460 --> 01:05:27,300
That's OK.
1228
01:05:27,300 --> 01:05:29,140
I can live with that.
1229
01:05:29,140 --> 01:05:31,220
It's still good for your brain.
1230
01:05:31,220 --> 01:05:32,740
Yeah.
1231
01:05:32,740 --> 01:05:35,300
It probably is.
1232
01:05:35,300 --> 01:05:37,980
All right, well, thank you so much for your time.
1233
01:05:37,980 --> 01:05:41,020
What was really fun to talk about these things.
1234
01:05:41,020 --> 01:05:44,140
Bilingualism is just, like whenever I ever tell anybody
1235
01:05:44,140 --> 01:05:48,020
in like civilian life that I work on language in the brain,
1236
01:05:48,020 --> 01:05:51,180
they almost always ask questions related to bilingualism
1237
01:05:51,180 --> 01:05:51,900
or multilingualism.
1238
01:05:51,900 --> 01:05:52,420
Oh, really?
1239
01:05:52,420 --> 01:05:53,700
For some reason, that's the most fascinating,
1240
01:05:53,700 --> 01:05:55,860
and that's the most asked topic that I get.
1241
01:05:55,860 --> 01:05:56,420
What do they ask?
1242
01:05:56,420 --> 01:05:57,660
What are the questions they ask you?
1243
01:05:57,660 --> 01:06:00,020
The most common question would probably
1244
01:06:00,020 --> 01:06:02,940
be like if I speak two languages, are they
1245
01:06:02,940 --> 01:06:04,860
processed in different parts of my brain?
1246
01:06:04,860 --> 01:06:05,860
I think
1247
01:06:05,860 --> 01:06:09,180
oddly enough, I think that's not a question
1248
01:06:09,180 --> 01:06:11,980
that we actually fully know the answer to.
1249
01:06:11,980 --> 01:06:14,180
But that's probably a topic for another day.
1250
01:06:14,180 --> 01:06:16,100
But yeah, people love this topic.
1251
01:06:16,100 --> 01:06:19,300
And I don't think I've done a podcast on it before.
1252
01:06:19,300 --> 01:06:20,300
So, I think people are going to be interested in this.
1253
01:06:20,300 --> 01:06:21,980
Well, you have had Cathy Price.
1254
01:06:21,980 --> 01:06:24,580
And she's done some really important bilingualism stuff.
1255
01:06:24,580 --> 01:06:27,340
Yeah, I think, but I don't think we necessarily
1256
01:06:27,340 --> 01:06:28,780
talked about that on the podcast.
1257
01:06:28,780 --> 01:06:32,180
But yeah, no, I mean, Cathy Price has worked on everything.
1258
01:06:32,180 --> 01:06:33,780
I could have a podcast where I'd only
1259
01:06:33,780 --> 01:06:36,260
talk to Cathy Price each week, and we'd
1260
01:06:36,260 --> 01:06:38,180
stay busy for a long time.
1261
01:06:38,180 --> 01:06:40,180
But yeah, I think people are going to really find this
1262
01:06:40,180 --> 01:06:41,540
interesting as I did.
1263
01:06:41,540 --> 01:06:43,260
So, thank you so much.
1264
01:06:43,260 --> 01:06:44,300
Thank you very much for inviting me.
1265
01:06:44,300 --> 01:06:45,420
I really enjoyed it.
1266
01:06:45,420 --> 01:06:46,060
Yeah, all right.
1267
01:06:46,060 --> 01:06:46,780
Well take care.
1268
01:06:46,780 --> 01:06:49,260
And I look forward to hopefully meeting you
1269
01:06:49,260 --> 01:06:50,980
in real life at some point.
1270
01:06:50,980 --> 01:06:52,020
OK, bye-bye.
1271
01:06:52,020 --> 01:06:53,300
OK, bye.
1272
01:06:53,300 --> 01:06:55,500
OK, well, that's it for episode 36.
1273
01:06:55,500 --> 01:06:57,260
Thank you, Ellen, for joining me on the podcast.
1274
01:06:57,260 --> 01:06:59,060
This was a really fun conversation.
1275
01:06:59,060 --> 01:07:01,460
I've linked the papers we discussed in the show notes.
1276
01:07:01,460 --> 01:07:05,980
And on the podcast website at langneurosci.org/podcast.
1277
01:07:05,980 --> 01:07:07,940
Thank you to Marcia Petyt for editing the transcript
1278
01:07:07,940 --> 01:07:10,340
of this episode and thank you all for listening.
1279
01:07:10,340 --> 01:07:12,420
Bye for now and see you next time.
1280
01:07:12,420 --> 01:07:15,420
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1281
01:07:15,420 --> 01:07:45,420
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