Last year, a high-profile study in Nature Aging offered a particularly intriguing finding: Living in a multilingual country can protect your brain from the ravages of time.
It’s a compelling, feel-good narrative. It suggests that the simple act of juggling multiple languages provides a cognitive workout so powerful it slows down biological aging. In a world where we increasingly fear cognitive decline, the message was clear: Pick up a second (or third) language, and you might just buy your brain some extra years.
But as the saying goes, if a headline sounds too good to be true, it’s probably missing the bigger picture. In my recent critique published in the journal Brain and Language, my colleagues and I argue that the “multilingual advantage” observed in this study isn’t necessarily about verbs and syntax. We argue it’s about money, mobility, and medicine.
The “Yes, But” of Big Data
The original study looked at 27 European countries and found that those with high rates of multilingualism showed “healthier” brain aging. While the data itself is a valuable descriptive map of Europe, the interpretation is where things get tricky. The study treats national multilingualism as an “exposure” that helps everyone…
