Learning Chinese in the 21st Century: a Cognitive Neuroscientist’s Perspective.

Language learning is usually considered nowadays from one of two complementary perspectives. The first one is practical, focusing on language as a means of communication, a tool for travels and a useful asset in business. The second emphasizes more the cultural aspects, with language being the key to understand other nations and civilizations. However, for centuries and across different cultures, there has been also a third motivation, seeing language learning as a mental exercise, an intellectual equivalent of gymnastics.

I will argue that learning Chinese is a perfect example of all three approaches presented above. And Chinese offers also unique challenges and opportunities to a cognitive and neuroscientist interested in the impact of language learning on mind and brain. One of such aspects is Chinese writing system, allowing a much clearer distinction than in any other living language between sounds and their visual representations in characters. I will present recent studies examining whether learning to speak and to write Chinese might have differential impact on specific aspects of attention.

Thomas Bak is a researcher at the University of Edinburgh whose work centres on the impact of bilingualism on cognitive functions, bilingualism and cognitive function across the lifespan, cross-linguistic studies of aphasia, and the relationship between language, cognition and culture in neurodegenerative brain diseases.

Dr. Bak also works on the design and adaptation of cognitive and motor assessments to different languages and cultures. 2010-2018 He was president of the World Federation of Neurology Research Group on Aphasia, Dementia and Cognitive Disorders. He is best known for his work on the impact of bilingualism on cognitive ageing, in particular the finding that in people who speak two languages (whether from childhood or acquired later in life), dementia is delayed.