In favor of multilingualism
In the past, it was believed that growing up with multiple languages was a disadvantage, as you might not fully master any of the languages. Fortunately, this perspective has changed! We now know that children can easily learn multiple languages. Research even shows that multilingualism can be advantageous in some aspects.
Cognitive flexibility
For instance, when you are bilingual, you often speak your languages with different interlocutors, often leading to switching between languages. This requires a lot of cognitive control from the brain, since bilinguals brains will have to constantly inhibit the language they are not currently using.. For this reason, they seem to be cognitively more flexible, and it can be observed as a behavioral advantage against monolinguals.
Contradictory results
Het probleem is echter dat sommige onderzoekers dit voordeel/verschil tussen een- en tweetaligen wél vinden, en anderen niet. Waar komt dit door? Mogelijk ligt het aan de taak die wordt gebruikt in een onderzoek. Onderzoekers kiezen namelijk niet allemaal dezelfde taak: sommige taken zijn moeilijker dan de anderen.
Easy and hard tasks
In easier tasks, the monolingual brain possibly works a little more to achieve the same result as the bilingual brain. But when the task becomes more difficult, the monolingual brain can no longer achieve the same result by simply trying harder, and differences between monolinguals and bilinguals begin to emerge.
Results depend on task difficulty
When we compared bilinguals who varied in their bilingual experience, our results partially support this explanation. The debate is not yet settled, but it does seem that bilinguals might have a cognitive advantage. However, whether we can observe this difference depends on the level of difficulty of the task used in a study!
