In recent years, social scientists published a flurry of studies touting the cognitive superiority of being multilingual because of direct multilingual affects on the brain.
Most multilingual individuals fall into two general categories: many speak one language at home and live in societies where another language dominates. They pick up both languages as young children without much conscious effort because young children evolved to easily pick up languages. Other multilingual individuals are higher in IQ, wealth, conscientiousness, and education level than the societies they live in. They learned additional languages, often through media, schooling, and more effort. Even in poor countries, the children of cognitive elites tend to be multilingual, often having English as a second language. Of such studies I could easily obtain and control F, the words IQ, conscientiousness, and educational level were nowhere.
To some extent, knowing additional languages helps international workers and travelers earn more money. In other words, income and multilingualism mutually cause each other for some individuals. Some jobs require multilingualism.
But unless social scientists tease out results due to IQ, conscientiousness, educational level, and other potential causal factors, such direct cognitive benefit studies are worthless.
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