Does bilingualism really affect social flexibility?

Vives, Marc-Lluís, 1991-; Repke, Lydia; Costa, Albert, 1970-

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1366728918000123

Does bilingualism really affect social flexibility?

Citation

Vives ML, Repke L, Costa A. Does bilingualism really affect social flexibility? Biling (Camb Engl). 2018 Nov;21(5):952-6. DOI: 10.1017/S1366728918000123

Abstract

Ikizer and Ramirez-Esparza (2017) reported a study suggesting that bilingualism may have a positive impact on people's social skills. They found that a) bilinguals scored higher on a scale that is supposed to reveal social flexibility, and that b) they also report having social interactions more frequently than monolinguals. The authors relate this advantage in social flexibility to the need of exercising language switching in bilingual speakers. In this commentary, we argue that their arguments are not theoretically sound and that their observations are not compelling enough to reach this conclusion.