Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Learning a second language could do more than help a child travel internationally: It could completely change the way they look at life—according to a new study from Concordia University in Montreal.
As psychology Professor Krista Byers-Heinlein and undergraduate student/co-author Bianca Garcia explain, most young children believe human and animal characteristics are innate, and that traits such as native language and clothing preference are intrinsic, not acquired.
However, their research indicates that many bilingual youngsters are more likely to believe psychological traits are learned, not inherent. Therefore, teaching children a second language while they’re still in preschool could help expand their views about the world around them.
Byers-Heinlein and Garcia tested a total of 48 monolingual, simultaneous bilingual (learned two languages at the same time) and sequential bilingual (learned one language, followed by another) five- and six-year-olds. They found that those who had been exposed to a second language after the age of three were more likely to believe that an individual’s traits arise from experience.
Each of the children were told stories about babies that had been born to English parents, but were adopted by Italian parents, as well as tales of ducks that had been raised by dogs. They were then asked if the fictional children would speak English or Italian when they grew up, and whether or not the ducks raised by dogs would quack or bark, and if they would have feathers or fur.
“We predicted that sequential bilinguals’ own experience of learning language would help them understand that human language is actually learned, but that all children would expect other traits such as animal vocalizations and physical characteristics to be innate,” Byers-Heinlein, who is also a member of the Centre for Research in Human Development, said in a statement about their study.
She said the results were surprising. While sequential bilinguals were able to tell that a child raised by Italian parents would speak Italian, they were also more likely to believe that a duck raised by dogs would bark and run rather than quack and fly. In other words, they believed that, like humans, animals could also learn through experience, and exhibited traits weren’t purely inherent.
“Both monolinguals and second language learners showed some errors in their thinking, but each group made different kinds of mistakes,” said Byers-Heinlein. “Monolinguals were more likely to think that everything is innate, while bilinguals were more likely to think that everything is learned.”
“Children’s systematic errors are really interesting to psychologists, because they help us understand the process of development,” she added. “Our results provide a striking demonstration that everyday experience in one domain – language learning – can alter children’s beliefs about a wide range of domains, reducing children’s essentialist biases.”
The authors said their research could have important sociological implications, because adults who believe characteristics are innate and not learned are more likely to have strongly held prejudices and to endorse stereotypes.
“Our finding that bilingualism reduces essentialist beliefs raises the possibility that early second language education could be used to promote the acceptance of human social and physical diversity,” Byers-Heinlein noted.
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