Imagine a person, who sits in a restaurant in front of you, asking you to pass her ‘that plate on the right’… Would you reach out for the plate to your right or to your left? The answer may lie in perspective taking, meaning that if you would take the perspective of the other person, you would reach out for the plate to your left, but if you keep your own perspective, you would go for the plate to your right. What, however, if your counterpart already accounted for your perspective?! J As it turns out, matters of different perspectives do not only make for (at times) amusing misunderstandings in our daily lives, but they also seem to be of great importance in communication in general.
The importance of adopting another’s perspective for communication is discussed in a recent NY Times article, which also highlights that bilingual individuals have superior skills in that regard. In one of my previous blog articles on multilingualism I brought up existing support for the beneficial influences of bi- and multilingualism on cognitive abilities (e.g. efficiency of thinking and creativity) and cultural competence. Yet, there are additional benefits, as recent research shows that bi- and multilingualism improves communication skills.
In this study, the researchers tested monolingual and bilingual children on a task that required perspective taking. The results indicated that bilingual children were performing better than monolingual children. Interestingly, this result stands true only in the case of monolingual children from monolingual environments. At the same time, monolingual children, who were exposed to a multilingual environment, performed as well as bilingual children on perspective taking tasks (although still performed worse on cognitive tasks). As the researchers conclude, it is not bilingualism per se, which improves communication skills, but the result of being raised in an environment where multiple languages are spoken. Why so?
I believe the answer is quite simple: in a multilingual environment one needs to be more attentive to environmental cues. For example, a monolingual kid in a multilingual environment might need to attend more to body language of another person in order to communicate more effectively. Similarly, being prepared for not necessarily understanding others (in the case of monolinguals exposed to a multilingual environment) or switching between languages (in the case of bi- and multilinguals), will probably enhance the skill of perspective taking. In other words, you are less likely to assume that your perception fully corresponds to the perception of others (especially because you use different words for the same objects), but you learn to assume or question the other side’s perception.
Given the implications of ongoing globalization, which I am devoted to writing about in this blog, this scientific evidence seems to me quite positive and encouraging. Not only is there an increase in the number of people, who speak more than one language and share several cultural backgrounds, but our environment also becomes more multicultural, and hence multilingual, in general. And as multilingual exposure seems to facilitate the basic skills of interpersonal understanding, thus enhancing communication skills overall, could globalization yet move us towards a better society? An intriguing thought indeed.
From reading the underlying studies it seems a little unclear if the advantage is reached by learning another language vs growing up in a multi-language environment, but there seems to be some indication that the latter situation is the one discussed here.
That is an important distinction, given that many children are learning foreign languages from an early age but only a minority grow up in a home where the local language differs from what is spoken within the home (or at least with some of the care takers.)
You can now keep up with their daily activities instantly. I remeber only speaking with family on the holidays because the long distance rates were so costly.