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Scottish scientists claim that speaking two languages (illustrated) does not give people cognitive advantages as previously claimed

The notion that being bilingual makes you smarter has been the focus of numerous scientific studies in recent years.

But now researchers claim that there is a growing battery of evidence that this is a myth.

In one experiment, they did not detect any cognitive benefit in people who could speak two languages. 

They say that the widely held belief could be the result of publication bias - where a study only gets published if an effect is found.

Language experts from Abertay University in Dundee, Scotland, originally set out to explain why being bilingual makes people smarter.

They wanted to see whether there was a similar cognitive advantage to speaking two dialects - something that had not been looked at before.

To find out, they examined cognitive control in a group of people who switched between speaking a Dundonian dialect and standard Scottish English, with cognitive control in two other groups: bilinguals and monolinguals.

They used a test known as the Simon task, which enables psychologists to examine inhibitory control.

They were surprised to find that the bilingual people performed no better in the cognitive task than those who spoke one language, or a dialect.

Vera Kempe, Professor of Psychology of Language Learning at the university, said there were no differences in performance at all.

'When we started our research, we were convinced - like everybody else - that there was an advantage to being bilingual, but when we carried out our analysis, we were astonished by the results. 

The scientists claim that there is no conclusive evidence that bilingualism makes you smarter. Previous studies have claimed that the ability to speak two languages (such as Bradley Cooper who speaks French pictured left and Mila Kunis, who speaks Russian, right) have better memories and problem-solving abilities

'Although we had replicated the original study to the letter, we found no benefit in either of our bilingual groups - neither in the Gaelic-English bilinguals, nor the bilinguals speaking a variety of Asian languages.

'At first we were stumped. How could this be? How could we have failed to find an effect, when we knew there was supposed to be one?

'When we began to dig deeper, we discovered that - far from being an anomaly - our study is actually one in a now growing number of studies that fail to find that bilingualism makes you smarter.

'In other words, there is actually no conclusive evidence that bilingualism makes you smarter.'

She believes that publication bias could be to blame and that it is misleading for educational policy recommendations to be based on the belief that learning languages makes you smarter when it is not yet clear whether this is true.

Professor Kempe said: 'Saying that "some scientists carried out a study, but didn't find anything," doesn't make for a very good story - and that is where the problem lies.

'There is so much pressure to demonstrate novelty and real-life impact that it has sometimes been difficult for scientists to get studies published if they haven't found something startling and newsworthy.

'Other factors that come with being bilingual - like being an immigrant or coming from a culture which values mentally challenging activities - may be responsible for a benefit in some instances.'

She said that while psychologists are keen to understand whether learning more languages leads to mental agility, they do not have conclusive evidence yet.

Professor Kempe said: 'What we can do in the meanwhile, though, is to encourage everybody - especially young people - to learn languages not based on the selfish motive of boosting individual brain power, but because knowing languages affords us the opportunity to connect with different people from different backgrounds and cultures.'

'Perhaps being able to see the world from another point of view is the most beneficial and mind-enhancing effect that comes with learning languages.'

The new study is one of many that claims that being bilingual doesn't make people smarter. However, a study in June showed that learning a second language (stock image) at any point in life could help keep your brain sharp as you age