Encore: The benefits of being bilingual, with Viorica Marian, PhD

More than half the world’s population speaks more than one language. Viorica Marian, PhD, of Northwestern University, talks about why speaking multiple languages may have far-reaching cognitive benefits, how the bilingual brain processes language, and how the languages we speak shape the way we think and perceive the world. Originally aired March 1, 2024. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  New and exclusive holiday decor just launched online at The Home Depot. Check out the viral Grand Duchess collection with smart holiday lights you can control from your phone. Easily customize the twinkle across trees, wreaths, and garlands to match your holiday vibe. Create stunning light effects, then switch it up with the tap of your fingers. Even the man in red will be impressed. Shop the holiday decor you want, online only, at homedepot.com.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Somebody asked me how I'd define myself, and I didn't know what to say. Because how can someone be defined when we're always evolving? I've been so many things. I'll be so many others.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Because identity's not a performance, it's an exploration. Never the same, but always myself. That's the paradox. Paradox intense, and the new sweet chemistry by Prada.

• 1:01Kim Mills?

  Speaking of psychology is taking a winter break, so we're rerunning some of our favorite episodes from the past. Last year, I talked to researcher Viorica Marian about why speaking multiple languages is good for the brain, and about how language shapes the way we see the world. We hope you enjoy this episode from the archives. Speaking of Psychology will be back with new episodes in early January. Thank you for listening.

• 1:29Kim Mills?

  Over the past 40 years, the number of people in the United States who speak a language other than English at home has nearly tripled to 68 million. That's about one in every five Americans. And in many other parts of the world, bilingualism and multilingualism are even more common. In fact, more than half the world's population speaks more than one language. In recent years, scientists have begun to explore what's going on in the brains of people who are bilingual or multilingual. And they found evidence that speaking multiple languages may have cognitive benefits that include improving people's executive function abilities and slowing down the progression of age-related dementia.

• 2:11Kim Mills?

  Researchers are also learning more about how the bilingual brain processes language and how the languages we speak shape the way we think and perceive the world. So why might speaking multiple languages have such far-reaching benefits? How does the brain process more than one language at a time? How do the languages we speak affect the way we see the world and the decisions we make? And what counts as being bilingual? Are people who are fluent in computer code or even math or music bilingual? And finally, if you're interested in the benefits of learning a new language, is it ever too late to try? Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association

• 2:54Kim Mills?

  that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills. My guest today is Dr. Viorica Marian, a professor in the Department of Psychology and Communication Sciences and Disorders at Northwestern University. She's a psychologist and cognitive scientist whose research focuses on bilingualism and multilingualism. She studies the relationship between language and memory, as well as how people process spoken and written language. Dr. Marion is the author of the recent book, The Power of Language: How the Codes We Use to Think, Speak, and Live Transform Our Minds. Dr. Marion, thank you for joining me today.

• 3:37Speaker 03

  Thank you for having me. It's good to be here.

• 3:40Kim Mills?

  You open your book with an epigraph, "To Have Another Language is to Possess Another Soul." Why did you choose that quote? What does it mean to you?

• 3:49Speaker 03

  I chose that quote because it reflects on what people who speak two or more languages often experience, that when they use their different languages, they become slightly different versions of themselves, with each language bringing to the forefront different cultural experiences, different memories, different aspects of their identity, um, different relationships, and in a, in a way, uh, serving as a filter through which they see the world and interact with, uh, themselves, with others, and with, with the world at large.

• 4:25Kim Mills?

  Now, you speak multiple languages, including Romanian, Russian, and English. How did your own early experiences of language lead you to the work that you're doing now?

• 4:36Speaker 03

  Yes, I grew up in a family that spoke Romanian at home in one of the former Soviet republics, where Russian was the official language outside the home, so I went to Russian childcare and grew up with both Romanian and Russian in parallel. Then later in school, I started to study English, then in college, French, uh, then I learned some Spanish, then I married into a Dutch family, and ended up really being exposed to a variety of languages, which, as you mentioned earlier in your introduction, is very common, not only in Europe, but in many different parts of the world. Um, in countries, uh, pretty much every continent, people often speak, uh, two or more languages from early childhood, and then acquire additional languages often, uh, later in life.

• 5:21Speaker 03

  So it is very common for, um, the human condition to really be a bilingual, multilingual one.

• 5:28Kim Mills?

  When you call someone bilingual, does that mean the person grew up speaking two languages, or can you become bilingual later in life by studying another language and becoming fluent? In other words, I'm looking for a definition.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  You can become bilingual at any age, so you don't have to grow up with two languages to be bilingual. You can learn a second language in childhood, in adolescence, in adulthood, and even in your older age. A bilingual is a person who can, uh, use two languages. A multilingual is a person who knows and can use more than two languages. So, uh, the definition of bilingualism is broad, and it depends, uh, you know, really who you talk to, but, um, it's the ability to...

• 6:14Speaker 03

  encode our thoughts, our ideas, concepts in more than one symbolic system. And then be able to transmit across time and space these thoughts, these ideas, and have someone else decode them. So the more symbolic systems you have at your disposal, the more languages you know.

• 6:32Kim Mills?

  What about people who can understand a second language, but they can't actually speak it, or they speak a little of it with great difficulty? I'm thinking of this, my, my mother grew up in an Italian family at a time when you weren't supposed to speak Italian, except in the home, and they didn't want their kids to speak Italian, but the kids understood what the parents were saying. Do you get any of the brain benefits of being bilingual if you are in that situation?

• 6:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you are referring to what's known as heritage bilingualism. Bilinguals who grew up in a household where there is a heritage language that their parents or grandparents or their previous family, generations of their family spoke, that may be different from the dominant language outside the home. And there are many heritage bilinguals in the United States. The extent of their fluency in the two languages varies, but they do indeed show many of the consequences of knowing two languages that children and who grew up with two languages or who, or people who are fluent in both languages show as well.

• 7:38Speaker 03

  So it's really the type of language experience that you have that, that can make you bilingual or multilingual. And there are different kinds of bilinguals and multilinguals.

• 7:49Kim Mills?

  Oh, let's talk for a minute about some of the benefits that you researchers have found by studying people who are bilingual or, or multilingual. What, what are the kinds of benefits that they experience in the way that they think, in the way that their brain functions and, and maybe even is structured?

• 8:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, so one of the most striking and interesting findings in recent years is that people who use two or more languages show a delayed onset of Alzheimer's and other types of dementia. They are diagnosed on average four to six years later than monolinguals, depending on the study that you are looking at. It seems that knowing two or more languages offers some of those protective.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  Benefits against the cognitive decline that's often seen, that's sometimes seen with healthy aging and that's regularly seen with dementia. And not only at the individual level, but at the population level, there are now

• 8:54Speaker 03

  studies that show that countries in which two or more languages are official languages of the country have a lower incidence of dementia than countries where one language is the official language of the country. And there is actually a direct correlation between the number of languages spoken in the country and the incidence of Alzheimer's. So it's a really interesting new finding showing that the consequences of being bilingual or multilingual are not only at the level of the individual, but also at the level of society. And actually, in my book, The Power of Language, I organize the

• 9:32Speaker 03

  the book is structured into two parts. The first one talks about the self and then the second one talks about society and how both are changed by knowing two or more languages. In the case of dementia, what seems to be happening is that the constant workouts that our brains receive by having to juggle multiple languages is like an exercise for the brain and has this positive consequences. So one way to describe this is imagine that you have been taking the same bridge or the same road home every day for many years throughout your life. You go to work, you come home, you take this road.

• 10:16Speaker 03

  You go to the store, you go to the pharmacy, wherever you're going, you go back and forth, you always take the same road. And then one day when you're way back, you discover that that road has collapsed. If that's the only road that exists to your house, then you are in trouble. You won't be able to reach your destination. But if there are multiple roads that have been built over time, if you know those roads, then you simply reroute your car and you are able to reach your destination with no problem. In the same way, if there are multiple languages that you've used throughout your life to encode memories, to encode experiences, to learn, to live your life in, you can compensate functionally through using those languages.

• 11:02Speaker 03

  Um, for the anatomical deterioration that your brain experiences. So it's not that the bilingual or multilingual brain doesn't experience deterioration. It does, but people who know two or more languages are able to compensate for it functionally and live a health, a life as if they don't have the same degree of impact for longer. And, you know, four to six years might not seem like a lot when you are, I don't know, twenty, eighteen, but when you are older, four to six years is really a big difference um in, and can make a difference from being able to play with your grandchildren or never, never knowing them.

• 11:44Speaker 03

  Um, and there is nothing else that we know of, other than perhaps exercise, that has as strong of an effect on, um, a protective effect on cognitive decline and Alzheimer's system and dementia as the effect size of bilingualism and multilingualism. So, um, it's one of the most remarkable recent findings in the, in the field.

• 12:06Kim Mills?

  So exercise is up there, but what about some of these other mentally enriching things that we engage in, such as maybe having more years of education or, or a challenging hobby? You're saying that, that being multilingual, it gives you greater cognitive benefits than those things?

• 12:22Speaker 03

  Those are all good, and you're right, that a level of education is a plus. Um, nutrition is a plus, engaging and enriching activities is a plus. All of those things are very good, but based on the, on my review of the literature, looking at meta-analysis, it seems like that effect sizes are largest for exercise and bilingualism. And what's really interesting about bilingualism and multilingualism is that you don't have to take time out of your life. To to engage in those activities to see benefits. So for example, we know that engaging in cognitively enriching benefits uh in cognitively

• 13:04Speaker 03

  enriching activities like um Sudoku or you know word puzzles or math or just any kind of uh cognitively challenging activity is beneficial for the brain. And it's it's a good thing to do as we age for our cognitive health. But for for all of those, you have to actively take time out of your life um to do those things, whether it's reading and of course, reading is wonderful for you, whether it's doing puzzles, um that's all great. But with being bilingual and multilingual, you simply go about your life using one language or another. And you are constantly giving your brain a workout because your brain has to facilitate the language you are using and inhibit the language you are not using and sort of control the languages you are using at any given time.

• 13:49Speaker 03

  For example, you and I right now are speaking in English. Our brains have to control our output. It would do us little good if I suddenly would switch to Spanish or French or Romanian or Russian, uh so I have to make sure that I control those. I inhibit those and I facilitate just English. And you do this all the time, whether you are reading, you know, a road sign, you're listening to a movie, uh song, you're speaking with someone, um you're constantly uh juggling your many languages. So this constant experience juggling different languages um seems to be having an effect on your executive function that later translates to um benefits beyond just language.

• 14:30Speaker 03

  And I have to say that this area of research, not the dementia part, but the executive function part is somewhat controversial. Not all studies find uh benefits of bilingualism on executive function. And sometimes people are up in arms about that. I am not up in arms about that and I can tell you why. Um the reason I'm not up in arms about that is because bilingual experience varies, there are different kinds of bilingualism. Executive function is an umbrella term that includes multiple components. So I think asking the question in this absolute ways, does bilingualism benefit executive function or not? This black or white approach is not the right way to look at things. Um a better question would be to ask what aspect, what kinds of language experience?

• 15:17Speaker 03

  Influence what kind of executive function and under what circumstance? Uh, it's sort of like thinking about exercise. I think universally, everyone knows that exercise is good for you. We agree that exercise is good for your health and for aging. But it's not like every single type of exercise you do um will benefit every single type of your health uh under every single kind of, you know, amount and duration. And there are just so many other variables. Some things benefit, some variables, others benefit other variables. So taking this absolute black and white approach is really not a good way to do science. I know that we all like simplify yes, no answers. But um it's a much more nuanced, nuanced, complicated issue.

• 16:01Kim Mills?

  I want to talk for a minute about what goes on in the brains of people who know multiple languages. Are all of the languages, you know, always active? Or is your brain shutting off and sectioning things? So that you know that we're speaking English right now. You're not going to slip into Romanian by accident.

• 16:18Speaker 03

  Uh huh. Yeah, we, we used to think that people switch between languages. There was this language switch hypothesis where there was the belief that when you use one language, uh you're using it, then you're done with it, you switch it off, you switch the other one on, you use that other language. Um, and there's also the belief that different languages are represented in different parts of the brain. Uh, so you have like a place for English, a place for French, a place for Hebrew, a place for Arabic, whatever language you are using. Um, we now know that's not the case. We know that um language is distributed through our multiple areas of the brain. It's a network.

• 16:59Speaker 03

  Um, and we also know that we don't ever really switch off our languages. They are constantly co-activated and running in parallel. So our brain is this very impressive superorganisms that processes information in parallel at all times from multiple modalities.

• 17:19Speaker 03

  And we know this through multiple lines of research, including research that uses eye tracking that shows that people who speak multiple languages, when they hear a word in one language, they often make eye movements to objects in their visual display, in their visual scene, that sound similar in another language. So for example, if you are an English speaker and I sit you in front of a bunch of objects on the desk and I tell you to pick up a marker while recording your eye movements, as you pick up the marker, you will often make eye movements to other objects, like marbles, for example, that start with the same word onset, like marker and marbles. But if you speak Spanish,

• 18:04Speaker 03

  you make eye movements to other objects that start with the same onset in your language, like a butterfly. The Spanish word for butterfly is mariposa. If you speak Russian, you may make eye movements, or you do make eye movements, to a stamp, because the Russian word for stamp is marka. So as you hear marker, you make eye movements to a stamp. So people who speak different languages make eye movements towards different objects as they hear language. Different objects in their display, in their visual scene attract their attention. And we are now even finding that they remember what they had seen differently, depending on the languages they speak. So if you ask a Russian speaker, they are much more likely to remember that there was a stamp

• 18:49Speaker 03

  on their desk when they were looking for a marker than an English monolingual speaker. And the Spanish speaker is more likely to remember that, you know, they saw a butterfly flying around when they were looking for a marker than if you don't speak Spanish. It's really interesting because it shows us that the languages we speak influence what we see, our perception of the world around us, our perception of reality, and influences what we remember later when we think about our environment, so think back to experiences we've had. So language is this very powerful experience that we filter our world through and our lives through.

• 19:31Speaker 00

  New and exclusive holiday decor just launched online at The Home Depot. Check out the viral Grand Duchess collection with smart holiday lights you can control from your phone. Easily customize the twinkle across trees, wreaths, and garlands to match your holiday vibe.

• 19:48Speaker 00

  Create stunning light effects, then switch it up with the tap of your fingers. Even the man in red will be impressed. Shop the holiday decor you want, online only, at homedepot.com.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Somebody asked me how I'd define myself, and I didn't know what to say. Because how can someone be defined when we're always evolving? I've been so many things. I'll be so many others.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Because identity's not a performance, it's an exploration. Never the same, but always myself. That's the paradox. Paradox Intense and the New Sweet Chemistry by Prada.

• 20:31Kim Mills?

  If you grow up in a bilingual household, at what point do you realize that there are two different languages being spoken instead of one big language that encompasses both?

• 20:43Speaker 03

  That's a good question because it taps into what's known as metalinguistic ability. Metalinguistic ability is the ability to reason about language abstractly. And we all, as adults, develop it eventually. So adults know that you can call something by any word you want, and it doesn't change what this word is. I might have, you know, a pen, and I might call it a pan or a ручка or столова, or however you might call it, and it doesn't change it. But bilingual kids develop this ability to reason about objects and their names in these abstract ways earlier than monolingual kids. At an early age, they understand that

• 21:28Speaker 03

  the world and the words we use to refer to the world are not one and the same, that you can change the labels and it doesn't change the object. So this is really a foundational skill for cognitive development, being able to reason abstractly about our environment and the labels we use to refer to it.

• 21:47Kim Mills?

  In your book, you write about how for people who are bilingual, the experience of speaking in their native versus their non-native language may be quite different. For example, people may make different moral decisions or access different memories when they're talking in their native versus their non-native language. Can you talk about that? What are the connections among language, memory, and emotion that are all at play?

• 22:13Speaker 03

  This is a really rich topic because it does make a big difference in our decision making and the emotions we feel and how we think about our identity and how we interact with others, depending on which language we are speaking at any given time. There is some evidence suggesting that the native language tends to be a more emotional language, tends to be tied to emotions more closely, whereas the second language often can be a more logical language or make, lead to people making decisions that are more logical and utilitarian.

• 22:54Speaker 03

  So, in one of these areas of research, scientists were asking bilinguals to make moral decisions in either their native language or their second language. And I'll give you an example. You may have heard of the very famous trolley dilemma. And there are different versions of it, but in this particular version of the trolley dilemma, a trolley is coming down the tracks and there are five workers working on the tracks and the trolley is about to run over them and kill them. And you are standing on the footbridge above those tracks, next to a large person with a large backpack, and if you push that person off the footbridge, the person will die, but

• 23:34Speaker 03

  that will stop the trolley and will save the lives of these five people. So the question is, is it permissible to sacrifice the life of one person to save the lives of five people? How would you answer that?

• 23:49Kim Mills?

  I hate that dilemma. I don't know what I would do. I would, I think I would not be able to push somebody off a bridge.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  I hate the dilemma too, and I know what you mean. And your answer, it really just depends. You can, you can change. A lot of people would say, yeah, I can see how it makes more sense to sacrifice one person for five, but I would never. Push a person off the bridge or kill a person. It, you know, some people would be more likely to do it if all they have to do is push a button versus push a person. Uh, and then it depends if it's five people versus five thousand people. There are so many versions of this uh problem. But interestingly, it seems that if you ask bilinguals to make this decision in their native language versus their second language, um you see differences in how they answer. They are much more likely to be guided by what's known as ontological values.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  So what's inherently morally right or wrong in their native language? And be sa- and say that they are, that they are less likely to sacrifice the life, to kill one person, to sacrifice the life of one person for five than when they're speaking their native language versus when they're speaking their second language. When they're speaking their second language, they are more likely to make a utilitarian decision. Um, and, and decide that

• 25:07Speaker 03

  you go with the decision that has the greater good. So this is one uh set of experiments, but people have looked at the likelihood of cheating, at medical decisions, at all sorts of decisions. And they are finding that bilinguals tend to make different decisions in one language versus another. Um, and it does seem that, that the first language is just tends to be more closely tied to emotions. And I think many individuals who speak two or more languages often experience it themselves, that they feel a different reaction when someone says, I love you to them in their native language. Or when they say it themselves in their native language versus their second language.

• 25:47Speaker 03

  So that's a tip out there for your listeners who may be in the relationships with uh bilinguals or multilinguals, uh to learn some of these key phrases, emotional phrases in the native language of the person you are in a relationship with to help build a deeper connection. Um, and it's, it's also curse words. People, their bilinguals differ in their likelihood of being able to curse or how worked up they get when they hear curse words in their native language versus second language. Um, many bilinguals, myself included, will tell you that, um, they could never.

• 26:23Speaker 03

  Curse and in certain, you know, powerful and native language and have no problem doing that in their second, third, fourth language, where you don't have just such strong connections and emotional reactions. So there is, there is this relationship between the language you speak and how you feel, what you remember, the emotion. It's just, we could talk about this for so long because there is just so much interesting research on this topic. And I go into a lot of it in the book, but I'm happy to you to talk about some of the examples here.

• 27:03Kim Mills?

  I want to ask something a little bit out of left field, maybe. We did a podcast not that long ago about people who can speak dozens of languages. And I'm wondering, in all the research you have done, is there a limit to the number of languages that a human brain can learn?

• 27:20Speaker 03

  Not that we know of. And I think this is one of the reasons why I'm so interested in multilingualism. At the core of it, I'm interested in language and thought, language and mind, how closely related language and thought are. What does language learning tell us about learning in general? Because there does seem to be a relationship between, you know, with each new language you learn, it becomes easier to learn additional language. So it's this virtuous cycle. The more you learn, the easier it becomes to learn more things in languages. So there are indeed multilinguals who speak two, six, 20.

• 28:04Speaker 03

  They've been, there have been claims of over 100 languages. And it of course also depends on what you define as a language and what you define as fluency. But The human mind seems to be able to learn languages, you know, ad infinitum, really. And it's really interesting to compare artificial intelligence and human intelligence and use multilingualism as a way to study the human potential.

• 28:38Kim Mills?

  What is language, if I can ask that? How do you define it? Is computer code language? Is math language? Is music language?

• 28:48Speaker 03

  I'm glad you asked it because I think most people use a definition of language

• 28:54Speaker 03

  in a somewhat narrower sense than I intend to think about it. So usually when most people, when they think about language, they think about natural languages like English or Spanish or French or Hindi, a language that a group of people can speaks and communicates, or sign language.

• 29:14Speaker 03

  If we broaden the definition of language

• 29:18Speaker 03

  to use it to refer to a symbolic system. So language as something that uses symbols to communicate information, then we can go beyond these natural human languages. And it is an apt definition because as we mentioned earlier, what languages do is they use symbols, words, notations to encode a thought, an idea, a concept, transmit it over space and time for someone at the other end or something at the other end to decode it. And if we use that broader definition, that not just, they're not just natural languages, they're not just sign languages,

• 30:04Speaker 03

  which are also natural languages, but also computer languages, artificial languages, math, music can also be conceived of as symbolic systems, as languages. And many will tell you that math is a language. That's one of the most powerful languages out there. Math is the queen of sciences that allows us to encode really complex ideas that have allowed, has allowed

• 30:32Speaker 03

  humanity to make discoveries and build things that we wouldn't be able to do without math. So.

• 30:39Speaker 03

  If we broaden the definition of language to symbolic systems, then most of our minds, even if we only speak one natural language, human natural language, have multiple symbolic systems at our disposal because we can read math and use math. Perhaps we can read music. And each of those symbolic systems changes the way we think. If you have math and you can reason about very big numbers that we couldn't reason about centuries ago, or you have very small numbers, again, you can use

• 31:19Speaker 03

  math and language to now talk about things that I cannot see and create mental concepts that you would not be able to create otherwise. So, language is key to scientific discovery, to thought, to technology, to science, to human advancement. It's one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal.

• 31:49Kim Mills?

  We all know that it's easy or easier for kids to pick up a language compared to adults. But can a person learn a language fluently at any age?

• 32:04Speaker 03

  We used to think that there is this critical age period. And if you missed that critical age period, too bad, you won't be able to learn a language and you won't be able to learn a second or third language. That turns out not to be the case. You can learn a second language and you can, or third or multiple languages, and you can learn them to fluency at any age. Now, you may have an accent if you learn your second or third language later in life, after puberty, after your articulatory system is set. Not always, some people don't have accents, but many do. You can hear me speak with an accent in English, even though I would consider myself fluent in English. I do have an accent because I learned English later in life.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  But I'm fluent in it and you can learn a language to fluency at any age. But even if you don't learn a language to fluency, I would almost say it it it helps to remove that pressure of yourself and say, well, I can't be fluent. I will always have an accent. I'll never be fluent in another language, so maybe I shouldn't even bother. Um, I think that's the wrong approach. You can see a lot of the consequences and benefits uh of learning another language even without being fluent. And most of all, it it can actually improve your quality of life in many different ways depending on how you choose to learn another language. But if you um choose to learn another language by engaging in activities that you enjoy,

• 33:33Speaker 03

  that bring you uh pleasure and joy and enrich your life and you find a way to learn another language that makes you happy, be it by exchanging language lessons with another person. And we know that social interaction is so beneficial for mental health, physical health has a lot of positive consequences. Or by immersion, by by traveling, living in another country. And you enjoy that, then um the quality of your life will be improved by that. Or maybe you enjoy uh learning it using apps. And the many of the apps right now capitalize on the knowledge we have from neuroscience uh by having this reward circuit in the brain activated, all the serotonin.

• 34:14Speaker 03

  And uh you know, you play this game and you get a reward of some sort, where it's a badge or a sound and you move through levels and you enjoy doing that. So whatever it is, maybe you enjoy listening to music in another language or watching a movie in another language. So um there are so many reasons to learn another language that may make your life more enjoyable and better that even if you don't become fluent um is worthwhile.

• 34:43Kim Mills?

  I I want to talk for a minute about an op ed that you wrote that was published in the Washington Post not long ago that talked about how artificial intelligence may decrease language diversity and multilingualism in the future. Why do you believe that?

• 35:00Speaker 03

  So.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  I will uh pull back by saying that most artificial ma- artificial intelligence that is now making uh the news, as it is so much, realize what's known as large language models. And these large language models follow the same principles that linguists and psycholinguists, psychologists of language have been studying for decades. Um, I don't think that many people anticipated that the advancement of these large language models will happen as fast as it has and that uh they will be able to do as as much as they can right now already, based on essentially learning and using statistical probabilities in their input at the base.

• 35:47Speaker 03

  Um, but now that AI is there and it's developing so rapidly and we have this evolution of AI, evolution of knowledge, it is at a very rapid pace, faster than previous generations, um.

• 36:03Speaker 03

  It's everyone's guess what will happen next and people vary in the predictions they make and um their predictions are informed on based on their knowledge. If you're a computer scientist, if you're a learning theorist. I'm a psycholinguist, so my predictions are based on what I know about language.

• 36:23Speaker 03

  And what I will say to that is that our initial predictions, our my initial expectation and and reaction would be to think that having this L L M's will be beneficial to language diversity because we think, well, now we can use online translation tools that can immediately translate text, that can translate uh language input. Here's my phone and I can speak into it and will immediately translate when I'm traveling into the language of my listener. So these are all wonderful things and and certainly, you know, great benefits. You can also now uh document, record and save many languages that are dying.

• 37:03Speaker 03

  So the initial uh thought is that it will be beneficial and the we do have those beneficial components. But I think long term, uh my prognosis for the diversity of natural languages is is a result of AI is is grim. And and here's why, there are more than seven thousand languages spoken in the world today. We lose a few every year. In theory, you could have LLMs, you could have large language models based on all of these 7,000-plus natural languages. However, the way LLMs work is they learn based on the digital footprint that the language has online.

• 37:48Speaker 03

  So the more information, the larger the database that exists online, the better those language models will be. And we do have a huge linguistic footprint in English, in Mandarin, in French, in several languages. So those models learn on a much larger input and therefore they become better than large language models that learn on a much more limited input. And predictions vary on how many LLMs are likely to become really powerful. Some conservative estimates are at around 20,

• 38:27Speaker 03

  but even if we broaden it from 20 to, let's say, 200 or 2,000, it's not realistic to think 2,000, but that's still not 7,000-plus. So most likely, only a very small, relatively to the 7,000-plus languages will have a large enough digital footprint to result in very good, strong LLMs, language models. And you can think of this almost as an invasive species that then drives out the smaller languages. And of course, we're not talking about tomorrow or a year from now. We are talking about a few generations.

• 39:12Speaker 03

  But, and this is, and some might say, much less than a few generations. It remains to be seen because human nature is such that we will always want to use the best, the strongest. So we'll always want to use the best model out there. So eventually, a few models will win out. So if we take it, if we push this argument really further, almost to the, like, a science fiction film direction.

• 39:38Speaker 03

  You can imagine a situation where a lot of the small languages are disappearing at a much faster pace. And if language and thought are indeed interconnected with this many languages dying out, we lose some diversity of thought. We use the cultures, the concepts, the differences in the way people think as a result of these dying languages. So we will simultaneously, potentially have two competing things happening at the same time. Diversity of languages, natural languages disappearing, diversity of human thought disappearing, maybe having more uniform thinking as a result of only several large alalims. While at the same time as

• 40:22Speaker 03

  the decreased diversity of languages and thought, the artificial languages and artificial intelligence continues to evolve and become stronger. And that's not a great scenario to think about for for us humans. Now, we don't know what will happen. Things can go very different ways right now. In just this past week, very recently, the European Union started putting some guidelines in place on artificial intelligence. I'm sure most other countries will follow, but it's very difficult, if not impossible, to regulate AI in this kind of research. It doesn't take

• 41:07Speaker 03

  a lot to have a rule nation or an individual or group of individuals to really not want to follow those regulations. So we are on the precipice of big changes in in the evolution of knowledge. And I think the psychology of language is likely to play an important role there. It almost makes me think of the movie Arrival. On how important the ability to communicate is for for humanity.

• 41:39Kim Mills?

  One last question to wrap up. What what are the big questions you're looking at now? What would you like to be able to answer in the next six months or a year?

• 41:48Speaker 03

  We have we have about a dozen experiments in the lab right now. Uh. So for the past more than twenty years, I've been looking at co-activation and parallel processing of languages in bilinguals and multilinguals. And now I'm looking at the consequences of parallel processing for higher level cognition, for higher level cognitive processes like memory, like creativity, like decision-making, like semantic organization. So does the fact that our mind processes multiple languages in parallel changes um higher level cognition? So I just mentioned the memory study that was just published in Science Advances this year, showing that people who speak different languages remember different things.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  So now we are looking at the consequences for creativity, decision-making. We're also looking at the relationship between form and meaning. So are the, is it completely arbitrary, the form of words and the meaning they carry? Um. Which tells us about the relationship between language and thought. And this is another question that has been around for centuries. Um. We're looking at, we have a study right now on parents, children, and parents and children around in different countries who are bilingual. And we are finding that parents and children, toddlers, young children, four-year-olds and their moms, interact with each other differently, depending upon which language they speak.

• 43:15Speaker 03

  So as early as a preschool age, um, children interact differently with their caregivers, and the caregivers interact differently with the children, depending on the languages that they speak. So um, we have multiple projects in the lab. We're looking at emotion processing, we're looking at um perception of truth and um susceptibility to misinformation across languages. We have so many interesting projects, and there is enough work uh for a lifetime, many more lifetimes. I think it's, it's uh.

• 43:57Speaker 03

  A field that has been understudied up until relatively very recently in the history of science.

• 44:04Kim Mills?

  Dr. Marian, I want to thank you for joining me today. This has been really fascinating. I appreciate your taking the time.

• 44:10Speaker 03

  Thank you for having me. I really enjoy talking to you and I enjoy talking about these issues and I hope that people who speak two or more languages and even those who don't enjoy the conversation we have and want to dig in deeper and look at some of the studies, read the book and find out more about the relationship between language and thought.

• 44:33Kim Mills?

  And let's all go out there and learn a new language.

• 44:36Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 44:37Kim Mills?

  You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at www.speakingsofpsychology.org or on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you've heard, please leave us a review. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at [email protected]. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lee Weinerman. Our sound editor is Chris Kandian. Thank you for listening for the American Psychological Association. I'm Kim Mills.