There is absolutely no surprise here. For me it was always obvious that the more languages we use, the more chance to “step back” from a particular interpretation of Concepts of Understanding the World. Different languages map relationships between what we may call Generalized Concepts in a different way, and an inevitable “remapping of conceptual networks” when languages are switched helps a person to deeper understand the underlying mental reality. Not being attached to a particular reflective model that is wired into a particular language may be considered a special – and very valuable! – form of freedom. In this respect, multiple experimental results of better “switching capabilities” of bilinguals mentioned in the article make a lot of sense. On top of that, there is special value (for Europeans / Americans) in being exposed to an Eastern language because of high effect of “complementarity” of the conceptual maps. That’s why we started to invite Chinese teacher for our son when he was 2, so now (at 3.5) he is exposed to Russian, English and Mandarin…

(March 16, 2013)