The Pros And Cons Of Bilingualism

Some scholars of psychology argue that being bilingual means being superior in cognitive ability. These scholars have access to a plethora of published research supporting the cognitive advantages of bilingualism. However, evidence supporting the cognitive disadvantages of bilingualism does exist, but the publication of them is not as frequent. Positive abstracts supporting cognitive advantages were published due to numerous reasons and the authors of this study suggest one reason is called, publication bias. Publication bias occurs when the outcome of a research study influences the decision of publication. For example, if a publisher believes that bilingualism gives him/her a cognitive boost over monolinguals, then he will selectively
verify publication of the study supporting the cognitive advantages of bilingualism over the disadvantages. Publication bias is evident in the publication of cognitive advantages of bilingualism, and evidence in this study can support the claim. Although some publishers do not express publication bias, publication bias poses as an interesting topic for those interested in uncovering the problem behind the few publications of negative abstracts, such as cognitive disadvantages of bilingualism. The presence of publication bias presents a problem for the field of psychology.
Publishers with publication bias selectively publish abstracts causing a disparity between the number of supporting arguments and counterarguments of a study. Moreover, this study observed the number of positive abstracts, supporting cognitive advantages, published has reached a high percentile of 63%, as the negative abstracts published is at a low 36% over the span of 13 years. With a higher number of positive abstracts published, the study of cognitive advantages of bilingualism presents a stronger argument over the cognitive disadvantages of bilingualism. Also, the rejection in the publication of negative abstracts leaves a gap in knowledge of the psychology field. If a negative abstract consisted of a major discovery, beneficial to the field of psychology, was rejected, the knowledge obtained from the study will not reach the public. This study observed that some negative abstracts replicated the same method of research as positive abstracts, except they concluded their experiments with opposite results. These results can prove to be useful when considering the implications of bilingualism in a public setting, because some methods will be considered unreliable due to varied results. Consequently, those in a psychology-related profession, researching this topic, are more likely to believe bilingualism is beneficial to the cognitive function of an individual due to the overwhelming number of
supporting evidence. Furthermore, studies of publication bias will lead others to research if publication bias is evident across the world.
The abstracts used for this study were taken from national and international conferences, including topics of bilingualism, psycholinguistics, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry. The researchers observed 54 positive abstracts and 50 negative abstracts, but 34 of the positive and 18 of the negative were published. The difference in the number of published abstracts, according to the statistics, coveys that publishers across the world are more inclined to publish abstracts supporting the cognitive advantages of bilingualism. In addition, the selective publication poses a problem for meta-analysis. As data from multiple studies are collected, the absence of published negative abstracts shifts the mean of all the data. In the study, a funnel plot of the meta-analysis of published studies exhibited the standardized mean difference to be 0.30. Meaning, the mean of the cluster of data is leaning towards the cognitive advantages of bilingualism argument, making it more favorable. Therefore, the study of publication bias, using the cognitive advantages of bilingualism study, educated the public that the world is experiencing publication bias, and the international data collected does experience a directional shift supporting one
side. This study hypothesized there are more published abstracts supporting cognitive advantages of bilingualism in executing tasks than the cognitive disadvantages or no cognitive influence of bilingualism. The method of research was choosing conference abstracts with various stances on the theory of cognitive supremacy in bilingualism from 1999-2012 and comparing the percentage of those published from their respective group. They concluded there was a statistical significance between the percentages of published abstracts supporting the cognitive advantage abstracts and cognitive disadvantage abstracts that argue against the theory. Thus, the researchers stated the abstracts supporting the cognitive advantage study was more inclined to be published because the negative/null abstracts were, according to the authors, potentially too difficult to interpret. They also discussed there was an underlying sense of publication bias. Since there was a statistical difference in the percentages of published articles, scholars should be alarmed and aware that some arguments are left unopposed because of publication bias. Nevertheless, scholars should seek out the negative abstracts disproving them and criticize their stance. Scholars should also act on this discovery by challenging abstracts published and analyze its method of research. According to the authors, they observed that some negative abstracts replicated the same method of research as positive abstracts performed, but concluded their experiments with the opposite result. With this in mind, each argument poses a fair amount of evidence for justification, but the presence of more positive abstracts sways scholars to one side. Lastly, publishers who favor positive abstracts should give negative arguments the same amount of time and attention for a thorough investigation of the evidence before denying publication due to the length or style of data analysis. Therefore, this study is just the tip of the iceberg in discovering what other negative (or even positive) abstracts were rejected due to the evidence of publication bias in the publication of abstracts.