No evidence that foreign language learning in old age improves cognitive function: A randomized controlled study

Foreign language learning in older age has been proposed as a promising avenue for combatting age-related cognitive decline. We tested this hypothesis in a randomized controlled study in a sample of 160 healthy older participants (aged 65-75 years) who were randomized to 11 weeks of either language learning or relaxation training. Participants in the language learning condition obtained basic knowledge in Italian, but between-group differences in improvements on latent factors of verbal intelligence, spatial intelligence, working memory, item memory, or associative memory were negligible. We argue that this is not due to either poor measurement, low course intensity, or low statistical power, but that language learning in older age is likely to have no or trivially small effects on cognitive abilities. We place this in the context of the cognitive training literature and conclude that while skill acquisition expands the behavioral repertoire it does little to improve cognitive processing abilities.