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Professor Panos Athanasopoulos, a linguist from Lancaster University and Professor Emanuel Bylund, a linguist from Stellenbosch University and Stockholm University, have discovered that people who speak two languages fluently think about time differently depending on the language context in which they are estimating the duration of events.
The finding, reported in the ‘Journal of Experimental Psychology: General’, published by the American Psychological Association, reports the first evidence of cognitive flexibility in people who speak two languages.
Bilinguals go back and forth between their languages rapidly and, often, unconsciously - a phenomenon called code-switching.
But different languages also embody different worldviews, different ways of organizing the world around us. And time is a case in point.
For example, Swedish and English speakers prefer to mark the duration of events by referring to physical distances, e.g. a short break, a long wedding, etc. The passage of time is perceived as distance travelled.
But Greek and Spanish speakers tend to mark time by referring to physical quantities, e.g. a small break, a big wedding. The passage of time is perceived as growing volume.
Read more here (Lancaster University, UK)
The finding, reported in the ‘Journal of Experimental Psychology: General’, published by the American Psychological Association, reports the first evidence of cognitive flexibility in people who speak two languages.
Bilinguals go back and forth between their languages rapidly and, often, unconsciously - a phenomenon called code-switching.
But different languages also embody different worldviews, different ways of organizing the world around us. And time is a case in point.
For example, Swedish and English speakers prefer to mark the duration of events by referring to physical distances, e.g. a short break, a long wedding, etc. The passage of time is perceived as distance travelled.
But Greek and Spanish speakers tend to mark time by referring to physical quantities, e.g. a small break, a big wedding. The passage of time is perceived as growing volume.
Read more here (Lancaster University, UK)
