Charlemagne once said that “to possess another language is to possess a second soul”. Over half of the world's population speaks more than one language, and approximately 25% of the world's countries have two or more official languages. Multilingualism was seen as a disadvantage – especially among children – as research seemed to show that multilingual people had more problems such as language confusion than a monolingual person. But in recent decades, studies have actually begun to show the benefits brought by multilingualism, such as the superiority of bilingual children and adults in performance on tasks requiring cognitive control and the resistance of bilingual brains to cognitive decline. That's why scientists are more knowledgeable these days. Why? This is what researchers have been trying to understand. First of all, it is important to distinguish two types of multilinguals: the first is the one who has less in-depth knowledge or acquired the foreign language later in life, as opposed to the second who grew up with both languages. Indeed, the last category showed similar emotional responses when asked emotional sentences, regardless of the language used. To determine the extent of the influence of multilingualism on emotional or logical response, one method might be to examine the brain areas that control analytical and emotional processing, and in particular the switching between the two corresponding to switching between different languages. Cadwell-Harris in his article presents the study conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago: bilinguals were randomly asked to respond to decision-making scenarios in their native or foreign language. This experiment has also been reproduced in other countries. However, the results were all similar: the polyglots chose rather logical decisions while using their foreign language, in contrast to choosing a more emotional decision, such as gambling, while using their native language. Cadwell-Harris proposes some other scientific studies such as surveys, which also the only negative aspect of this article is that it does not provide a humanistic and real-life experiment, which is also what the author herself points out, leading to the non-final conclusive. On the contrary, “Change of language, change of personality” presents scientific experiments, connecting them to the sociological and humanistic side of the phenomenon. But his conclusion constitutes a highly negative aspect of the article. In fact, the author is too subjective in reducing scientific experiments and drawing original results to formulate his hypotheses: he generalizes the cause of the phenomenon to the context of the studies, without taking into account the meticulous disposition with which the researchers made sure to organize the experiment. For example, in the study conducted by Professor David Luna, the subjects were carefully chosen among all Hispanic-American women, they were asked to express their opinion on an advertisement that also depicted women, and the experiment was replicated six months ago.
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