March 18, 2025 • 28 mins
What happens inside the head when you learn a 2nd language?
'The Bilingual Brain' by Albert Costa is a quick summary of academic research on bilingual vs monolingual speakers. He looks at effects that knowing a 2nd language can have on the physical wiring as well as behavioural differences. So things like response times, vocab limits, gray matter density, etc. In the 5 chapters he goes over studies and you'll see some graphs & brain cross sections.
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Timeline:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:12) Themes/Questions
(00:20:56) Author & Extras
(00:23:10) Summary
(00:25:51) Value 4 Value
(00:27:14) Join Live!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kyrin Down (00:00):
What happens inside the head when you learn a second language?
Welcome everyone to another episode of the Mirror Models book reviews. I'm your host here, Kyrin, live on the 03/19/2025.
And as you might surmise, this is the podcast where I flex on my being a bilingual
(00:24):
upon all of you lowly monolingual
plebs out there. Worship me. Worship the bilinguals.
Okay. No. We won't be doing that today. Although we will be looking at the bilingual brain that we have by Albert Costa and what it tells us about the science of language with that being the subtitle there.
So this was published in 2017 originally
(00:45):
in Spanish, and I've got the 2019,
translated version into English here. I actually didn't know that before I started this. Otherwise, I might have tried to source the original Spanish. It's a 48
pages,
probably four hours reading in total. You get some, like, little
graphs and stuff within here that contribute to the pages, but the page counts relatively dense in but it's a a smallish book as well. It's just not not that super, super, super big.
(01:14):
It's a quick summary, I would say, of academic research on bilingual
versus monolingual
speakers as a whole. So
what he's really looking at here is the effects that having a second language
can have on the actual brain structure,
on processing time, on language count, on
(01:34):
social effects within people,
behavioral differences,
physical wiring.
Think of things like response times or vocabulary
count of,
overall
memory
and recall of words and things like this. So,
gray matter density, for example.
There's five chapters within the book and I will highlight them a little bit more, but they go under the names of bilingual cradles, two languages, one brain, how does bilingualism
(02:02):
sculpt the brain, mental gymnastics, and making decisions,
and then there's some further reading. And these there are some, like, graphs and stuff within the book that you can see as well.
So let's jump on to the main question from all of this. What does learning a second language do to your brain? And there's a associated
sub questions within this as well. So
(02:23):
I'm going to give you a PSA at the start here, public service announcement announcement.
Hold on to your horses. Don't get too deep into this because it's on the topic of social sciences,
by and large.
So there's many problems that you can already have and see within this book,
biases of publishing and papers, papers that
show an effect rather than don't show an effect tend to get published more, and therefore get talked about more and research more and etcetera, etcetera.
(02:51):
Impossibility of finding reasonable
sizes of
bilinguals
and monolinguals.
Typically, the studies in this book were of
a couple of hundred people max, so you're not getting huge
language sizes of the actual studies, filtering out cultural
education,
educational
(03:12):
variables, very difficult. What the hell is even a bilingual? You might ask because as one in the chat was asking,
if I know
how to speak
multiple languages, I know a couple of words in this language, does that make me bilingual?
I think by the by and large of the definitions of this would not be but
is a baby bilingual is a child who knows a couple of words in another language bilingual even though you know, they only know it in two languages.
(03:43):
Is someone who learned it later in life bilingual?
What if they learned it as a baby and then forgot it? Are they bilingual?
A lot of good questions related to this that don't really get answered. He kind of just skips over and says, like, monolingual obviously only speaks one language.
And then bilingual is,
you know, it's a little bit up in the air. So,
(04:05):
differences of learning it via TV, via school, or is, you know, what what exactly is it that we're measuring?
He doesn't get into that particularly. And I think that
is kind of,
I suppose,
shows up later in the book. So let's get off into the actual chapters. So he's kind of he starts off with babies in this cradle section,
(04:27):
before moving on to how can two languages actually coexist in the brain? What happens in the kind of switching process between them,
language processing itself in terms of words coming in? So I think of response times, things like this and recall
how attention is affected. So if you're switching between languages,
what is your kind of measure of
(04:50):
how quick you can do that as well as
ability to interpret words and things like this? And then finally,
decision making. If you're,
you know, if you know two languages,
do you make
more better decisions in your first language versus second language, things like this? So even though he puts it as monolingual versus bilingual,
(05:12):
a lot of the book also is diving into
how an individual person responds
and
behaves in their first language
versus their second language. And typically, that will be a dominant language
versus their second language, which will be less dominant. So,
you know, typically, there will be two groups. They'll have a control study,
(05:33):
and they'll do things like word recall of picture naming for Alzheimer patients, for example,
in their different languages,
pattern tasks.
Usually, it will have, like, a small one of study, and then he'll kind of interpret the meaning of this and what he thinks this means. So,
you know, he'll have
an individual study, and it's it's kind of like it's a little bit loose. There's there's little subchapters within these, I guess.
(06:01):
But,
you know, he'll have one in the two languages, one brain here section on interference.
So what actually happens and interferes when you're switching languages, for example, but it's it's kind of a little bit loose.
Personally, I found the studies kind of boring,
after a while.
And that it was the, you know, I'm already jumping into, I guess, like the
(06:24):
little bit of subjective my opinion in here.
But I feel like if I just presented the studies and said, this is what the book said,
I'd be doing a bit of a disservice to you as the reader at home.
So what what what kind of studies would you have? So there'll be ones like as you can see in the picture on your screen now,
there there'll be a baby. It'll have speakers coming from,
(06:48):
like there'll be a focal point on a TV screen in front of the baby that there to look at. But the actual speakers will be hidden behind two pictures, I believe, of their mom
on either side.
And it kind of measures like when the
the person starts speaking in one language versus their second language or whatever,
will the baby turn and look and, you know, focus of their attention and shows like, oh, okay, they will focus their attention on this area for this long, for monolinguals and bilinguals and their maternal or in their second language, something like this. There will also be ones where, you know, it'll have
(07:24):
a person
speaking to a baby and it's how much of the baby's attention is focused on the mouth versus just looking around in general. So these are the kind of things that you see for the babies. And then for other studies, they're,
they're kind of like how I mentioned before.
What I would say if I had to partition the studies as a whole
(07:44):
would be that
most of it was on the generalities
of qualitative
people,
preferences
or
how people kind of
behave.
So you're measuring something like
a baby's focal attention. So you're measuring something, but it's it's kind of like
(08:05):
qualitative in a way that, you know,
what is the reason this baby is looking at something? And, you know, is there a difference between
me focus staring intently at the camera as I am right now versus me just wandering around and like, you know, in generality looking in the direction of it whilst I'm also trying to think,
then you will have like
(08:25):
quantitative measures on kind of qualitative actions
or things that come. So
this would be like the response times and
when you're measuring, okay, it takes this person this long to respond
to a question or a picture and how long that'll come up. So there are quantitative measures, but it is kind of on
(08:49):
still on of what I would say is like a qualitative thing.
And then there's only a little bit on the actual cerebral findings of something that I would say is a little bit more rock solid, such as,
gray matter density in the brain or
activation of certain parts of the brain when speaking a first or second language, which you'll see through the,
(09:11):
the cutout plates of the cross sections of the brain.
Just in general, these type of books that can be a little bit liberal, I think, with their
presenting on their findings. So, you know, this study presented this,
and,
and then this is what this means.
And it can feel like just go a little bit
(09:32):
too far.
And and just the way they're stating things without also acknowledging, like, okay, this could just be a local phenomena
or this could just be a bias in the way they constructed their studies.
And if you want more of this, go check out the replication crisis of social studies, which was pretty much just like a decimation of all of these behavioral things that we'd found over the years that applied to humans. And it's like, okay, most of these studies were just one offs and
(10:00):
didn't act weren't actual truth or ground reality.
And probably the thing that put me off the most in this book was the guesswork. So
sure. Okay. I'll take some of these studies at face value
in that, yes, what they measured is actually correct. And their measuring system was good. But what do they mean? Well, you know, and then validating
(10:20):
what they actually mean as as truth. And
that
the
what what they're measuring is actually what they think they're measuring. So for example, the baby section was probably the most iffy in terms of the the findings.
One
himself says in the in the chat, my toddler will just walk away from the test. I wonder how much of that actually would happen where the baby's like, not even doing what they're they're meant to be, you know, they're trying to measure eye contact, eye attention, and the baby's like closing their eyes and falling asleep. You know, who knows?
(10:51):
But there's so there's a couple of things in this section, which really kind of irked me where he was saying, like, you know, babies are hearing their mother's voices in the womb for nine months where it's like, well, they don't even have ears for a large portion of that time. So very much doubt they're hearing it for the full nine months.
It's a little bit sloppy saying that using words as like or dislike to describe what the baby's doing where it's like this, I don't know, this could just seem like chaos.
(11:19):
And, you know, and if for example, bilingual babies look at mouths longer if they're,
if someone's talking to them and that's, it's a monolingual baby,
their parent or whoever it is in their first language,
they'll be like looking around the room. They'll probably look at the person for a little bit, but then look elsewhere and things like this. Whereas they measured, okay, bilingual babies,
(11:41):
if they're if someone's talking this, they spend more time on average looking at the person's mouth.
Now what do you make from this, in terms of the the meaning of this? He said, okay. You know, this obviously means that the bilingual baby
is trying to
interpret which language is being spoken, and they need as much information as possible to do this. Hence, they're going to look at the mouth movements because that also plays a large portion
(12:07):
of
speaking and interpreting things. Lip reading is a thing, for example.
And this is why the baby does that.
And the real question is, okay, let's
take them at face value. Yep. They measured accurately.
And sure enough, the baby, bilingual babies were looking longer. But is that the real reason for why they're doing it? Maybe
(12:30):
staring just helps concentration
and they just happen to stare at a person's mouth because that's where stimulation was coming from.
What if it's because they're there aren't really staring and their eyes are glazing over? They're entering some sort of like hypnotic trance,
for example, and they're they're more interested in just the humming
(12:52):
or or something like this. What if bilingual babies are just hungrier in general and there's some food scraps left on these people's mouths or, you know, okay, that one's a bit far out there, but
you get my gist. There is
plenty of different ways and reasons why you could interpret many of these studies to
say, okay, well, sure, we measured this, but
(13:13):
what are you actually measuring and what does it mean is is a big thing. So,
okay, what did I learn from this book? What do I think this book actually really has to teach us about
lang, languages
and language? Not really learning, but knowing a second language versus knowing one language.
What what can you take out from this? What are some things which are probably
(13:36):
truer in in the most extent that I I would take?
My high level takeaway is that bilingualism
rarely is a detractor from first language,
due to the action nature of the skill. So
if you learn a second language,
your first language is not going to get poorer because of that.
(13:58):
The it's not like learning a second language makes you more confused in your first language.
It's not like
growing up with two languages
is actually
detrimentally like cross ring neurons or paths in your brain and physic and physically making you stupider or
less able to react
(14:19):
or, you know, lowering your IQ or whatever it is, that is not what is actually happening.
Rather,
any detractions that one might notice
is pretty much due to
not spending as much time practicing
your your first language, I e, if you're spending time on a second language,
(14:41):
then
you're obviously
probably going to be taking time from your first language. So for example,
if you got two babies, and this is kind of what would would should generally happen
if you had two babies and one baby spent, you know, ten thousand hours over there first,
I don't know, like three years
(15:02):
being talked to in only one language and practicing that language.
If you had another bilingual baby that spent, you know, ten thousand hours on their first native language and then also three thousand hours on their second, so they just added more.
They should be as perfectly capable in that first language, and they should also know a bit of the second language. However, what would that's probably rare and what would most likely happen is they'd spend seven thousand hours on their first and then three thousand on their second, and therefore they'll know less words. And you can see this with things like
(15:35):
baby
children or people in high school and things like this.
If they are bilingual,
they'll tend to not have as many
words,
for domestic
situations and, like, nuances of of domestic stuff. Because usually what'll happen is they're speaking their their first or second language at home, that their parents are speaking to them or perhaps grandparents.
(16:02):
And then at school, they're learning the language of the actual country they're in and things like this. So,
what actually can happen is there's something such as, it costing more effort to switch between
languages.
And funnily enough, in particular, switching from
your second language back into your first is more costly than switching from your first into your second or your dominant
(16:27):
into your into your less dominant,
which is rather interesting. I would have
assumed it would have been the
going from dominant to non dominant would be harder in terms of, like, response times of kind of warming up the system. But that's actually not the case.
And this is because there's inhibitory processes to stop you just like
(16:50):
accidentally
speaking Spanglish, for example, where it's like, yo, quiero, we had, to the bathroom,
something like that, which would be, you know, I want to go to the bathroom or get away at our
venue. So
there's some interesting stuff when it comes to that. But by and large, learning a second language is not going to make your baby stupider. It's not gonna make you stupider.
(17:11):
It's not taking away
from something that already exists is probably the best way of saying it.
Any downsides that there are are likely not intellectual
in in nature
and are more likely to be emotional in nature.
So
for example, people prefer,
(17:31):
kids and I think people in general
prefer people with accents that are similar to theirs rather than those with dissimilar accents.
And this is even stronger than racial biases, for example. So kids at school would rather be friends with someone who speaks like them rather than someone who looks like them but doesn't speak like them, which is pretty interesting.
(17:56):
The other downsides is that,
emotionally
in your second language, in your
what is likely to be your non dominant language. Once again, this is getting into the the hard bits because
you could your first language, you could have learned as a child such like, Juan did, my co host.
And
(18:16):
you could say, okay, that's his first language, should be his dominant language. That would be incorrect because from, you know, age nine to 33 as he is now, he's he's mostly been speaking English. So even though English is his second language, it is his dominant language. So trying to sort this out between all of these studies
would just be an absolute nightmare. So they're probably basic tests of getting people in would be like, do speak two languages. Okay. You know, prove that you can via this simple test or whatever. Alright. You're in. And
(18:48):
this is the really hard stuff to do. So
in your
second language or
in your non dominant language,
Actually, I'm not actually sure of this because,
he doesn't really qualify that in in this particular study. But basically,
you will be emotionally
less
kind of capable in
(19:09):
in your second or non dominant language, whichever one of the two it is. And so you're more likely to use
swear words incorrectly.
You're more likely to actually, funnily enough, have
a bit of emotional distance. So you won't get caught up in
things as emotionally
charged, perhaps politics, perhaps
religion, perhaps things like this
(19:30):
in in your second language. Words themselves don't fire off
emotional areas in your brain.
And,
yep, the only other kind of downside is that learning a second language is really, really fucking hard. And so you go spend a lot of time on it. So, you know, me knowing Spanish
(19:52):
and having read Spanish books, for example, probably has cost me a couple of words in English because I wouldn't have read, you know, a book which had an obscure English word, which I would have then maybe have learned. You know, it's it's kind of hard to tell.
So there's a couple of things related to, like, the emotional side of things. But by and large, if you are a bilingual speaker,
(20:15):
you
have
a different kind of, like, emotional response in
your second language or your non dominant language. But intellectually speaking, it's not gonna harm you. So if you're thinking like, goddamn, I'm scared of raising my baby as bilingual,
chill out about that. It's more likely to be emotional stuff of having two different cultures, for example, or of misinterpreting
(20:40):
words in their non dominant language and then, you know, perhaps
saying things that they shouldn't say or which would be harmful in in those sort of contexts. But
in terms of IQ raw IQ and things like that, you're gonna be fine. Okay. Let's jump on to the author, some extra details. It's actually really hard to find details on him. Basically, the the best I can do is on the little blurb at the back here. So Albert Costa was research professor at Pompeu
(21:08):
Fabra,
University in Barcelona and the director of speech production and bilingualism group at the Center for Brain and, Cognition.
His research focused on the cognitive and neural underpinnings of language processing.
He talks he said he had, like, twenty or thirty years of experience, I believe,
in this.
Likely, from what I can interpret, that he retired from the university and then kind of had all of this knowledge over the years and was like,
(21:34):
might as well write a book. It was kind of the feeling I got because I believe this is a one time author,
and had some free time on his hands. I actually quite liked him. His style of writing was,
look, he's talking about studies, so it's kind of boring.
But he added enough
interesting stuff about himself,
(21:55):
about,
small little quips here and there, personal touches I really enjoyed. For example,
it's rare to find someone encouraging people to read other books.
So he talked about Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Bad Science, Thinking, Fast and Slow, for example,
and encourage you to to stop and stop this book and go read another, which, you know, is terrible. I'm sure his publisher hates him for it. But
(22:20):
the
it's it's a kind of generous thing to do in that in that respect.
Thanking patients to who have contributed to science,
particularly
when it's kind of degrading in nature, such as like a lot of the Alzheimer's tests and,
you know, making people feel foolish on purpose.
(22:41):
What is what happens in some of these studies?
He did pretty decent job of kind of devil's advocate, giving
thought to ideas and was kind of nuanced in
some of his interpretations
of these findings and just how rock solid the science actually is. No
corny dad jokes. He he had them all. He came across as a really likable guy. So in terms of the actual reading of this and his style,
(23:06):
yeah, it was good. I enjoyed I enjoyed actually reading him as a as an author,
which gets us on to our summary summary summary,
with some similar books recommendations.
It's a mildly interesting read on a topic I find really fascinating.
What you're not gonna find in this book is
tech tips, techniques on learning a second language on
(23:28):
on things like that. No, it's pretty much based on if you have a second language or
what what is actually going to or are bilingual, what is actually going to happen within your brain, and likely to parts of
your I'm not gonna say personality, but the behavioral
effects that have you interacting with other people and using languages.
(23:51):
So
I didn't really expect that myself coming in, which was kind of good. I I kind of figured, it's about the brain, so there'll probably be studies.
It's written by a researcher. So although there is, you know, the quirky stuff, it is still rather dry reading.
Getting through this at points was like, okay. I'm reading the study, which seems pretty similar to a lot of the other studies for, you know, the fourth or fifth time.
(24:14):
It's great, I think, for the
kind of overall context, the meta context. But,
you know, that was me having learned from previous books, scientific books like this of,
okay, don't take everything in here as gospel,
but it's not particularly riveting.
And even the last chapter, for example, it just kind of ends like it doesn't really have a sum up of
(24:37):
the every
general general everything of the book. So it's
like he's he's a researcher. He's not a he's not an author, so don't expect it to,
be particularly compelling.
So overall, the bilingual brain by Albert Costa, and there's a little bit meh, four and a half out of 10. I don't know. It was okay. But, you know, I'm not I'm not gonna rant and rave about this, for sure.
(25:02):
Similar books. Look, he he mentioned Thinking Fast and Slow by Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky. I've done a book review on that before. Very similar outcome, I think, that I took from this, which was
individual studies. You know, don't hang your hat on any of these being really real,
but the general trend of what they're describing
(25:22):
is probably correct. So I think it's similar in that respect,
Similar to like sperm wars in in essence, it's got that kind of feel. It's that type of book, but it's much better than sperm wars, though. So don't don't don't read that one, which I have not done a book review on, but I talk about quite often because that book tricked me. That was the one which,
(25:44):
made me,
immune to, okay, a lot of scientific studies don't really hold up to the test of time.
And we're gonna end it there for today with the value for value section.
Thank you for joining in. First of all, we're very much appreciated.
I do all of this and my my co host, Juan, also does this
for free. There's no ads, no sponsorships, no nothing in this podcast.
(26:08):
We just provide this value upfront, and we ask that you provide it back in turn. So many different ways of doing this. Yeah. Sharing the link. Word-of-mouth is super critical. So telling a friend, hey. I've checked saw this book review on the mere mortals book reviews. Check it out. It's really good.
I really like Kyron. I really like one as a host. They're bilingual. So therefore, they must be super smart and educated.
(26:31):
You could, you know, like, subscribe, comment, all those sorts of things.
Give me some book review recommendations.
I would love to hear those. What you think I would enjoy based on previous ones and past ones. What's your favorite book of all time? I'm really fascinated by what people are really drawn into. And then finally, you can send some treasure our way as a thank you,
(26:52):
for support.
And you can do that via meremortalspodcast.com/support.
And there's also a PayPal link down below.
Join in on a podcasting app where you can send in money,
directly within the app. One like fountain or true fans, customatic,
Podverse,
are all podcast guru are all all solid options as well.
(27:14):
Finally, I am live here as usual on 11AM Australian Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday. Juan was asking actually right at the start here.
Speaking multiple language,
enhances cognitive flexibility, delays of,
I'm not sure, dementia
and the processing cost. He has the processing cost thing speaking when I try to change languages
(27:37):
really, really quickly, which is probably also noticed with me.
I struggle
especially when the languages are similar, such as Portuguese and Spanish, and I've got differences between those.
I struggle to switch between them. And if my brain is kind of stuck in one of them, moving over to the other one
requires a real mental cost and effort, and it's not instantaneous
(28:01):
click. So,
you know, joining in on our livestream as well, the livestream is is really appreciated and giving me a little bit of feedback was is pretty fun. What's coming out in the future? I'm currently reading the Tao of Poo and the Tay of Piglet. Got a thousand book coming up.
So I'm reading that, and I've got a whole stack of books at the library waiting for me to pick up pick up tomorrow. So, you know, more on that in the future. Juan's been,
(28:26):
chucking up a couple episodes of
the random books that he's been reading as well. So
as always, more to come in the future. I really do hope you're having a fantastic day wherever you are in the world. Ciao for now. Karen out. Bye.
What happens inside the head when you learn a second language?
Welcome everyone to another episode of the Mirror Models book reviews. I'm your host here, Kyrin, live on the 03/19/2025.
And as you might surmise, this is the podcast where I flex on my being a bilingual
(00:24):
upon all of you lowly monolingual
plebs out there. Worship me. Worship the bilinguals.
Okay. No. We won't be doing that today. Although we will be looking at the bilingual brain that we have by Albert Costa and what it tells us about the science of language with that being the subtitle there.
So this was published in 2017 originally
(00:45):
in Spanish, and I've got the 2019,
translated version into English here. I actually didn't know that before I started this. Otherwise, I might have tried to source the original Spanish. It's a 48
pages,
probably four hours reading in total. You get some, like, little
graphs and stuff within here that contribute to the pages, but the page counts relatively dense in but it's a a smallish book as well. It's just not not that super, super, super big.
(01:14):
It's a quick summary, I would say, of academic research on bilingual
versus monolingual
speakers as a whole. So
what he's really looking at here is the effects that having a second language
can have on the actual brain structure,
on processing time, on language count, on
(01:34):
social effects within people,
behavioral differences,
physical wiring.
Think of things like response times or vocabulary
count of,
overall
memory
and recall of words and things like this. So,
gray matter density, for example.
There's five chapters within the book and I will highlight them a little bit more, but they go under the names of bilingual cradles, two languages, one brain, how does bilingualism
(02:02):
sculpt the brain, mental gymnastics, and making decisions,
and then there's some further reading. And these there are some, like, graphs and stuff within the book that you can see as well.
So let's jump on to the main question from all of this. What does learning a second language do to your brain? And there's a associated
sub questions within this as well. So
(02:23):
I'm going to give you a PSA at the start here, public service announcement announcement.
Hold on to your horses. Don't get too deep into this because it's on the topic of social sciences,
by and large.
So there's many problems that you can already have and see within this book,
biases of publishing and papers, papers that
show an effect rather than don't show an effect tend to get published more, and therefore get talked about more and research more and etcetera, etcetera.
(02:51):
Impossibility of finding reasonable
sizes of
bilinguals
and monolinguals.
Typically, the studies in this book were of
a couple of hundred people max, so you're not getting huge
language sizes of the actual studies, filtering out cultural
education,
educational
(03:12):
variables, very difficult. What the hell is even a bilingual? You might ask because as one in the chat was asking,
if I know
how to speak
multiple languages, I know a couple of words in this language, does that make me bilingual?
I think by the by and large of the definitions of this would not be but
is a baby bilingual is a child who knows a couple of words in another language bilingual even though you know, they only know it in two languages.
(03:43):
Is someone who learned it later in life bilingual?
What if they learned it as a baby and then forgot it? Are they bilingual?
A lot of good questions related to this that don't really get answered. He kind of just skips over and says, like, monolingual obviously only speaks one language.
And then bilingual is,
you know, it's a little bit up in the air. So,
(04:05):
differences of learning it via TV, via school, or is, you know, what what exactly is it that we're measuring?
He doesn't get into that particularly. And I think that
is kind of,
I suppose,
shows up later in the book. So let's get off into the actual chapters. So he's kind of he starts off with babies in this cradle section,
(04:27):
before moving on to how can two languages actually coexist in the brain? What happens in the kind of switching process between them,
language processing itself in terms of words coming in? So I think of response times, things like this and recall
how attention is affected. So if you're switching between languages,
what is your kind of measure of
(04:50):
how quick you can do that as well as
ability to interpret words and things like this? And then finally,
decision making. If you're,
you know, if you know two languages,
do you make
more better decisions in your first language versus second language, things like this? So even though he puts it as monolingual versus bilingual,
(05:12):
a lot of the book also is diving into
how an individual person responds
and
behaves in their first language
versus their second language. And typically, that will be a dominant language
versus their second language, which will be less dominant. So,
you know, typically, there will be two groups. They'll have a control study,
(05:33):
and they'll do things like word recall of picture naming for Alzheimer patients, for example,
in their different languages,
pattern tasks.
Usually, it will have, like, a small one of study, and then he'll kind of interpret the meaning of this and what he thinks this means. So,
you know, he'll have
an individual study, and it's it's kind of like it's a little bit loose. There's there's little subchapters within these, I guess.
(06:01):
But,
you know, he'll have one in the two languages, one brain here section on interference.
So what actually happens and interferes when you're switching languages, for example, but it's it's kind of a little bit loose.
Personally, I found the studies kind of boring,
after a while.
And that it was the, you know, I'm already jumping into, I guess, like the
(06:24):
little bit of subjective my opinion in here.
But I feel like if I just presented the studies and said, this is what the book said,
I'd be doing a bit of a disservice to you as the reader at home.
So what what what kind of studies would you have? So there'll be ones like as you can see in the picture on your screen now,
there there'll be a baby. It'll have speakers coming from,
(06:48):
like there'll be a focal point on a TV screen in front of the baby that there to look at. But the actual speakers will be hidden behind two pictures, I believe, of their mom
on either side.
And it kind of measures like when the
the person starts speaking in one language versus their second language or whatever,
will the baby turn and look and, you know, focus of their attention and shows like, oh, okay, they will focus their attention on this area for this long, for monolinguals and bilinguals and their maternal or in their second language, something like this. There will also be ones where, you know, it'll have
(07:24):
a person
speaking to a baby and it's how much of the baby's attention is focused on the mouth versus just looking around in general. So these are the kind of things that you see for the babies. And then for other studies, they're,
they're kind of like how I mentioned before.
What I would say if I had to partition the studies as a whole
(07:44):
would be that
most of it was on the generalities
of qualitative
people,
preferences
or
how people kind of
behave.
So you're measuring something like
a baby's focal attention. So you're measuring something, but it's it's kind of like
(08:05):
qualitative in a way that, you know,
what is the reason this baby is looking at something? And, you know, is there a difference between
me focus staring intently at the camera as I am right now versus me just wandering around and like, you know, in generality looking in the direction of it whilst I'm also trying to think,
then you will have like
(08:25):
quantitative measures on kind of qualitative actions
or things that come. So
this would be like the response times and
when you're measuring, okay, it takes this person this long to respond
to a question or a picture and how long that'll come up. So there are quantitative measures, but it is kind of on
(08:49):
still on of what I would say is like a qualitative thing.
And then there's only a little bit on the actual cerebral findings of something that I would say is a little bit more rock solid, such as,
gray matter density in the brain or
activation of certain parts of the brain when speaking a first or second language, which you'll see through the,
(09:11):
the cutout plates of the cross sections of the brain.
Just in general, these type of books that can be a little bit liberal, I think, with their
presenting on their findings. So, you know, this study presented this,
and,
and then this is what this means.
And it can feel like just go a little bit
(09:32):
too far.
And and just the way they're stating things without also acknowledging, like, okay, this could just be a local phenomena
or this could just be a bias in the way they constructed their studies.
And if you want more of this, go check out the replication crisis of social studies, which was pretty much just like a decimation of all of these behavioral things that we'd found over the years that applied to humans. And it's like, okay, most of these studies were just one offs and
(10:00):
didn't act weren't actual truth or ground reality.
And probably the thing that put me off the most in this book was the guesswork. So
sure. Okay. I'll take some of these studies at face value
in that, yes, what they measured is actually correct. And their measuring system was good. But what do they mean? Well, you know, and then validating
(10:20):
what they actually mean as as truth. And
that
the
what what they're measuring is actually what they think they're measuring. So for example, the baby section was probably the most iffy in terms of the the findings.
One
himself says in the in the chat, my toddler will just walk away from the test. I wonder how much of that actually would happen where the baby's like, not even doing what they're they're meant to be, you know, they're trying to measure eye contact, eye attention, and the baby's like closing their eyes and falling asleep. You know, who knows?
(10:51):
But there's so there's a couple of things in this section, which really kind of irked me where he was saying, like, you know, babies are hearing their mother's voices in the womb for nine months where it's like, well, they don't even have ears for a large portion of that time. So very much doubt they're hearing it for the full nine months.
It's a little bit sloppy saying that using words as like or dislike to describe what the baby's doing where it's like this, I don't know, this could just seem like chaos.
(11:19):
And, you know, and if for example, bilingual babies look at mouths longer if they're,
if someone's talking to them and that's, it's a monolingual baby,
their parent or whoever it is in their first language,
they'll be like looking around the room. They'll probably look at the person for a little bit, but then look elsewhere and things like this. Whereas they measured, okay, bilingual babies,
(11:41):
if they're if someone's talking this, they spend more time on average looking at the person's mouth.
Now what do you make from this, in terms of the the meaning of this? He said, okay. You know, this obviously means that the bilingual baby
is trying to
interpret which language is being spoken, and they need as much information as possible to do this. Hence, they're going to look at the mouth movements because that also plays a large portion
(12:07):
of
speaking and interpreting things. Lip reading is a thing, for example.
And this is why the baby does that.
And the real question is, okay, let's
take them at face value. Yep. They measured accurately.
And sure enough, the baby, bilingual babies were looking longer. But is that the real reason for why they're doing it? Maybe
(12:30):
staring just helps concentration
and they just happen to stare at a person's mouth because that's where stimulation was coming from.
What if it's because they're there aren't really staring and their eyes are glazing over? They're entering some sort of like hypnotic trance,
for example, and they're they're more interested in just the humming
(12:52):
or or something like this. What if bilingual babies are just hungrier in general and there's some food scraps left on these people's mouths or, you know, okay, that one's a bit far out there, but
you get my gist. There is
plenty of different ways and reasons why you could interpret many of these studies to
say, okay, well, sure, we measured this, but
(13:13):
what are you actually measuring and what does it mean is is a big thing. So,
okay, what did I learn from this book? What do I think this book actually really has to teach us about
lang, languages
and language? Not really learning, but knowing a second language versus knowing one language.
What what can you take out from this? What are some things which are probably
(13:36):
truer in in the most extent that I I would take?
My high level takeaway is that bilingualism
rarely is a detractor from first language,
due to the action nature of the skill. So
if you learn a second language,
your first language is not going to get poorer because of that.
(13:58):
The it's not like learning a second language makes you more confused in your first language.
It's not like
growing up with two languages
is actually
detrimentally like cross ring neurons or paths in your brain and physic and physically making you stupider or
less able to react
(14:19):
or, you know, lowering your IQ or whatever it is, that is not what is actually happening.
Rather,
any detractions that one might notice
is pretty much due to
not spending as much time practicing
your your first language, I e, if you're spending time on a second language,
(14:41):
then
you're obviously
probably going to be taking time from your first language. So for example,
if you got two babies, and this is kind of what would would should generally happen
if you had two babies and one baby spent, you know, ten thousand hours over there first,
I don't know, like three years
(15:02):
being talked to in only one language and practicing that language.
If you had another bilingual baby that spent, you know, ten thousand hours on their first native language and then also three thousand hours on their second, so they just added more.
They should be as perfectly capable in that first language, and they should also know a bit of the second language. However, what would that's probably rare and what would most likely happen is they'd spend seven thousand hours on their first and then three thousand on their second, and therefore they'll know less words. And you can see this with things like
(15:35):
baby
children or people in high school and things like this.
If they are bilingual,
they'll tend to not have as many
words,
for domestic
situations and, like, nuances of of domestic stuff. Because usually what'll happen is they're speaking their their first or second language at home, that their parents are speaking to them or perhaps grandparents.
(16:02):
And then at school, they're learning the language of the actual country they're in and things like this. So,
what actually can happen is there's something such as, it costing more effort to switch between
languages.
And funnily enough, in particular, switching from
your second language back into your first is more costly than switching from your first into your second or your dominant
(16:27):
into your into your less dominant,
which is rather interesting. I would have
assumed it would have been the
going from dominant to non dominant would be harder in terms of, like, response times of kind of warming up the system. But that's actually not the case.
And this is because there's inhibitory processes to stop you just like
(16:50):
accidentally
speaking Spanglish, for example, where it's like, yo, quiero, we had, to the bathroom,
something like that, which would be, you know, I want to go to the bathroom or get away at our
venue. So
there's some interesting stuff when it comes to that. But by and large, learning a second language is not going to make your baby stupider. It's not gonna make you stupider.
(17:11):
It's not taking away
from something that already exists is probably the best way of saying it.
Any downsides that there are are likely not intellectual
in in nature
and are more likely to be emotional in nature.
So
for example, people prefer,
(17:31):
kids and I think people in general
prefer people with accents that are similar to theirs rather than those with dissimilar accents.
And this is even stronger than racial biases, for example. So kids at school would rather be friends with someone who speaks like them rather than someone who looks like them but doesn't speak like them, which is pretty interesting.
(17:56):
The other downsides is that,
emotionally
in your second language, in your
what is likely to be your non dominant language. Once again, this is getting into the the hard bits because
you could your first language, you could have learned as a child such like, Juan did, my co host.
And
(18:16):
you could say, okay, that's his first language, should be his dominant language. That would be incorrect because from, you know, age nine to 33 as he is now, he's he's mostly been speaking English. So even though English is his second language, it is his dominant language. So trying to sort this out between all of these studies
would just be an absolute nightmare. So they're probably basic tests of getting people in would be like, do speak two languages. Okay. You know, prove that you can via this simple test or whatever. Alright. You're in. And
(18:48):
this is the really hard stuff to do. So
in your
second language or
in your non dominant language,
Actually, I'm not actually sure of this because,
he doesn't really qualify that in in this particular study. But basically,
you will be emotionally
less
kind of capable in
(19:09):
in your second or non dominant language, whichever one of the two it is. And so you're more likely to use
swear words incorrectly.
You're more likely to actually, funnily enough, have
a bit of emotional distance. So you won't get caught up in
things as emotionally
charged, perhaps politics, perhaps
religion, perhaps things like this
(19:30):
in in your second language. Words themselves don't fire off
emotional areas in your brain.
And,
yep, the only other kind of downside is that learning a second language is really, really fucking hard. And so you go spend a lot of time on it. So, you know, me knowing Spanish
(19:52):
and having read Spanish books, for example, probably has cost me a couple of words in English because I wouldn't have read, you know, a book which had an obscure English word, which I would have then maybe have learned. You know, it's it's kind of hard to tell.
So there's a couple of things related to, like, the emotional side of things. But by and large, if you are a bilingual speaker,
(20:15):
you
have
a different kind of, like, emotional response in
your second language or your non dominant language. But intellectually speaking, it's not gonna harm you. So if you're thinking like, goddamn, I'm scared of raising my baby as bilingual,
chill out about that. It's more likely to be emotional stuff of having two different cultures, for example, or of misinterpreting
(20:40):
words in their non dominant language and then, you know, perhaps
saying things that they shouldn't say or which would be harmful in in those sort of contexts. But
in terms of IQ raw IQ and things like that, you're gonna be fine. Okay. Let's jump on to the author, some extra details. It's actually really hard to find details on him. Basically, the the best I can do is on the little blurb at the back here. So Albert Costa was research professor at Pompeu
(21:08):
Fabra,
University in Barcelona and the director of speech production and bilingualism group at the Center for Brain and, Cognition.
His research focused on the cognitive and neural underpinnings of language processing.
He talks he said he had, like, twenty or thirty years of experience, I believe,
in this.
Likely, from what I can interpret, that he retired from the university and then kind of had all of this knowledge over the years and was like,
(21:34):
might as well write a book. It was kind of the feeling I got because I believe this is a one time author,
and had some free time on his hands. I actually quite liked him. His style of writing was,
look, he's talking about studies, so it's kind of boring.
But he added enough
interesting stuff about himself,
(21:55):
about,
small little quips here and there, personal touches I really enjoyed. For example,
it's rare to find someone encouraging people to read other books.
So he talked about Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Bad Science, Thinking, Fast and Slow, for example,
and encourage you to to stop and stop this book and go read another, which, you know, is terrible. I'm sure his publisher hates him for it. But
(22:20):
the
it's it's a kind of generous thing to do in that in that respect.
Thanking patients to who have contributed to science,
particularly
when it's kind of degrading in nature, such as like a lot of the Alzheimer's tests and,
you know, making people feel foolish on purpose.
(22:41):
What is what happens in some of these studies?
He did pretty decent job of kind of devil's advocate, giving
thought to ideas and was kind of nuanced in
some of his interpretations
of these findings and just how rock solid the science actually is. No
corny dad jokes. He he had them all. He came across as a really likable guy. So in terms of the actual reading of this and his style,
(23:06):
yeah, it was good. I enjoyed I enjoyed actually reading him as a as an author,
which gets us on to our summary summary summary,
with some similar books recommendations.
It's a mildly interesting read on a topic I find really fascinating.
What you're not gonna find in this book is
tech tips, techniques on learning a second language on
(23:28):
on things like that. No, it's pretty much based on if you have a second language or
what what is actually going to or are bilingual, what is actually going to happen within your brain, and likely to parts of
your I'm not gonna say personality, but the behavioral
effects that have you interacting with other people and using languages.
(23:51):
So
I didn't really expect that myself coming in, which was kind of good. I I kind of figured, it's about the brain, so there'll probably be studies.
It's written by a researcher. So although there is, you know, the quirky stuff, it is still rather dry reading.
Getting through this at points was like, okay. I'm reading the study, which seems pretty similar to a lot of the other studies for, you know, the fourth or fifth time.
(24:14):
It's great, I think, for the
kind of overall context, the meta context. But,
you know, that was me having learned from previous books, scientific books like this of,
okay, don't take everything in here as gospel,
but it's not particularly riveting.
And even the last chapter, for example, it just kind of ends like it doesn't really have a sum up of
(24:37):
the every
general general everything of the book. So it's
like he's he's a researcher. He's not a he's not an author, so don't expect it to,
be particularly compelling.
So overall, the bilingual brain by Albert Costa, and there's a little bit meh, four and a half out of 10. I don't know. It was okay. But, you know, I'm not I'm not gonna rant and rave about this, for sure.
(25:02):
Similar books. Look, he he mentioned Thinking Fast and Slow by Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky. I've done a book review on that before. Very similar outcome, I think, that I took from this, which was
individual studies. You know, don't hang your hat on any of these being really real,
but the general trend of what they're describing
(25:22):
is probably correct. So I think it's similar in that respect,
Similar to like sperm wars in in essence, it's got that kind of feel. It's that type of book, but it's much better than sperm wars, though. So don't don't don't read that one, which I have not done a book review on, but I talk about quite often because that book tricked me. That was the one which,
(25:44):
made me,
immune to, okay, a lot of scientific studies don't really hold up to the test of time.
And we're gonna end it there for today with the value for value section.
Thank you for joining in. First of all, we're very much appreciated.
I do all of this and my my co host, Juan, also does this
for free. There's no ads, no sponsorships, no nothing in this podcast.
(26:08):
We just provide this value upfront, and we ask that you provide it back in turn. So many different ways of doing this. Yeah. Sharing the link. Word-of-mouth is super critical. So telling a friend, hey. I've checked saw this book review on the mere mortals book reviews. Check it out. It's really good.
I really like Kyron. I really like one as a host. They're bilingual. So therefore, they must be super smart and educated.
(26:31):
You could, you know, like, subscribe, comment, all those sorts of things.
Give me some book review recommendations.
I would love to hear those. What you think I would enjoy based on previous ones and past ones. What's your favorite book of all time? I'm really fascinated by what people are really drawn into. And then finally, you can send some treasure our way as a thank you,
(26:52):
for support.
And you can do that via meremortalspodcast.com/support.
And there's also a PayPal link down below.
Join in on a podcasting app where you can send in money,
directly within the app. One like fountain or true fans, customatic,
Podverse,
are all podcast guru are all all solid options as well.
(27:14):
Finally, I am live here as usual on 11AM Australian Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday. Juan was asking actually right at the start here.
Speaking multiple language,
enhances cognitive flexibility, delays of,
I'm not sure, dementia
and the processing cost. He has the processing cost thing speaking when I try to change languages
(27:37):
really, really quickly, which is probably also noticed with me.
I struggle
especially when the languages are similar, such as Portuguese and Spanish, and I've got differences between those.
I struggle to switch between them. And if my brain is kind of stuck in one of them, moving over to the other one
requires a real mental cost and effort, and it's not instantaneous
(28:01):
click. So,
you know, joining in on our livestream as well, the livestream is is really appreciated and giving me a little bit of feedback was is pretty fun. What's coming out in the future? I'm currently reading the Tao of Poo and the Tay of Piglet. Got a thousand book coming up.
So I'm reading that, and I've got a whole stack of books at the library waiting for me to pick up pick up tomorrow. So, you know, more on that in the future. Juan's been,
(28:26):
chucking up a couple episodes of
the random books that he's been reading as well. So
as always, more to come in the future. I really do hope you're having a fantastic day wherever you are in the world. Ciao for now. Karen out. Bye.
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