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Can bilingualism help reduce prejudice and stereotypes?

2/25/2015

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Now here is an interesting question: if babies are born to English parents but adopted by Italians, what language would they speak? And how about ducks raised by dogs – would they bark or quack? Alright, adults can easily answer these questions but try to ask the same from 5-6 year olds, and the responses will surprise you.

Psychology professor Krista Byers-Heinlein and her co-author, Concordia undergraduate student Bianca Garcia, tested 48 monolingual, simultaneous bilingual (learned two languages at once) and sequential bilingual (learned one language and then another) five- and six-year-olds, and their findings were quite different than expected.

It turns out that language learning can change children’s beliefs about a wide range of domains, reducing their biases, therefore their tendency for prejudice and stereotyping. If you are interested in how each group of children responded, read along here.

Photo by Purestock/Thinkstock

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