The Link Between Multilinguals and People Skills

Katherine Kinzler, associate professor of psychology and human development at Cornell University, discusses her study, which found that children who are exposed to multiple languages are better at understanding other people's perspectives and are therefore better communicators.

Kinzler said, " being exposed to more than one language really provides children with an exercise in linguistic perspective taking. They think things like, 'who speaks what to whom?' 'Who understands what content?' 'In what environments are certain languages spoken?' And so in this sense, I think children who are exposed to multiple languages get a lot of practice with perspective taking."

The conversation drew the attention of New York City Council member Mark Levine who called into the show and said Kinzler's study bolstered his push to reintroduce foreign language courses into schools, because linguistic studies have been phased out of the city's education system.