Study suggests even moderate drinking could affect language fluency

[leosmith]

Article

people drinking more than seven units of alcohol per week experienced a faster decline in language fluency over the study compared to those who abstained from alcohol

[smallwhite]

Study suggests even moderate drinking could affect language fluency

When I saw that title I thought it was referring to how a beer or two gets you speaking your L2 more fluently. Many of us know that already

[blaurebell]

The study uses a cohort taken from a huge study called Whitehall II, so the missing factors can be deduced from the socioeconomic status included in this study. The data is from London, the most expensive city of Britain, so the living standard is dismal for low and medium income population. In Britain the average diet is somewhat more healthy than the standard american diet, but not by much. People simply don't have the money to eat well and that goes for all of Britain, not just London. Environmental toxin load is moderate for an overpopulated city. Activity and intellectual activity can be deduced from the socioeconomic status that is mentioned in the study. All the data is there, you just have to dig into the bigger study.

That said, the study is still of limited use as a general study because there is no "moderate" drinking in Britain. People don't just drink one beer, they binge-drink and they simply don't make that distinction in the Whitehall data. There is a huge difference between drinking one beer a day and drinking 7 beers one day a week. One a day can be handled by the liver, 7 in one day can't. Damaging your brain by overtaxing your liver every week for 30 years will obviously be bad and finally someone pointed it out. The study is basically only applicable for countries where people binge-drink, yes, but Britain reducing its recommended alcohol intake after this one makes total sense.

Study is a waste of money, imo.

People in Britain tend to be blind to the fact that British drinking behaviour is actually a problem. They tend to find it perfectly normal to have drunk people lying in the street every Friday night. It's not. I think it was about time that someone did a study like this. Someone pointing out that it's damaging to the brain could maybe change some attitudes and perceptions of what's normal and what's not. So, money well spent if this study changes some attitudes.

[Ingaræð]

People in Britain tend to be blind to the fact that British drinking behaviour is actually a problem. They tend to find it perfectly normal to have drunk people lying in the street every Friday night. It's not. I think it was about time that someone did a study like this. Someone pointing out that it's damaging to the brain could maybe change some attitudes and perceptions of what's normal and what's not. So, money well spent if this study changes some attitudes.

As someone living in a city, I would love your last sentence to be true. Unfortunately, nothing will change, because alcohol is the UK's equivalent of the US debate on gun control. There won't be a new, specific tax on alcohol because the upper-working- and middle-classes have a right to a £4-5 bottle of wine with their dinner at home. They won't change their attitudes until they have to go to A & E on a Saturday night and nearly die because the ambulance service and doctors are having to deal with the flood of drunk people instead. And when the drunk people have sobered up, they see their behaviour as a badge of honour.

You also have to wonder why the government will easily go after smokers, but won't do anything about the drinking problem. A previous government effectively even legislated to encourage it. Where I live, the local government knocked down a museum in order to put up more bars.

[blaurebell]

As someone living in a city, I would love your last sentence to be true. Unfortunately, nothing will change, because alcohol is the UK's equivalent of the US debate on gun control.

I know, I know, wishful thinking! I found it utterly frustrating to try and have a social life in the UK, mainly because I can't drink a single drop of alcohol for health reasons. Being surrounded by drunk people when you're completely sober is awful, disgusting, scary, Oh well. But then you know how fast the smoking changed in just a few years. People also thought nothing could be done about that for 50 years!

By the way, smart phones are bad for fluency too. People don't speak in full sentences anymore because they get distracted by their screens

Basically, for adequate fluency, reduce toxin load and unnecessary distractions.

[Serpent]

They did "lexical (how many words beginning with a specific letter can be generated in one minute) and semantic (how many words in a specific category can be named in one minute) fluency tests." And obviously they did this in L1, presumably only standard English was accepted.

As most of us know, in L2 this kind of skills is no guarantee of actual fluency or proficiency. Lots of people can list many words but not produce much or any meaningful output.

Also, if a person could name only a handful of household items or birds or whatever (in one minute!), this doesn't mean they wouldn't use other words in an actual conversation or understand them in books/media. Context generally makes it easier to recall the words you need.

[Elexi]

This discussion of a finding on the effects of drinking more than 7 units of alcohol per week (which is only three glasses of wine or three half-litre glasses of beer per week - less than general Western European levels) on language processing could have been interesting.

Alas no. Instead, this discussion has been used to make a swipe at the UK (as well as the USA) for having poor diet, low standards of living and drinking habits that are not 'normal' (normality here being defined by subjective prejudice).

As the links below show, this opinion lacks the evidential basis to amount to a properly reasoned argument. The Whitehall II cohort in the sample were employees in the London offices of the British Civil Service - in other words, the majority were not people on the edge of poverty and the sample was based on a cross section of different pay grades within the civil service - some were rich, some less so. The generalisation about the UK's alcohol consumption is also largely a fiction, perhaps based on the permissive nature of public drinking in the UK or the experience of student life. In 2010 UK alcohol consumption was 25th in the world - lower than that of German and France - and pretty much equal to 'normal' western European countries. The UK's standard of living is 9th in the world, marginally higher than Germany, France, Spain, etc. As to diet - the UK fell within the same range as France and Germany - and just lower than Spain.

In any event, the study is concerned professional people - a far cry from drunks on the streets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... per_capita
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/ ... ty-of-life
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langl ... 14-109X(14)70381-X/abstract

[Cavesa]

1. 7 units per week does not necessarily mean moderate drinking. If that means one unit per day, than it trully is moderate, it does have protective effects on the cardiovascular system, and the damage on the rest is rather low. Having one beer with your meal every day (a typical example of moderate drinking that causes the so called French paradox) is not a problem. But the UK is known to follow the other path, nothing during the week, the 7 units on Friday night. That is not moderate drinking, no protective effects this way, just a lot of harm. No need to bash their eating habits and stray far from the original topic, the well known drinking habits suffice.

2. Testing it on natives doesn't mean anything at all for learners. I would even dare to argue the true moderate drinking of one unit per day or two unites every other day (the dose still counting as moderate is 2 units for a woman and 3 for a man) may have positive effects, as even such a low dose can slightly inhibit our own inhibitions, such as low confidence, partially chemically and partially as a placebo. And I think we all know that confidence is just as important, or even much more, than just being able to remember words and structures. Natives speak the language normally before drinking, therefore the only possible results of this study could have been either their abilities staying the same (highly improbable, given basic biochemistry and physiology knowledge the study creators had surely been aware of before starting it) or lower.

It is very simple, a study made totally in today's fashion. Choose a subject and results someone will surely pay you for, choose the methods and sample to get such results, write the paperwork to get money, and publish.

[Speakeasy]

... This discussion ... has been used to make a swipe at the UK (as well as the USA) for having poor diet, low standards of living and drinking habits that are not 'normal' (normality here being defined by subjective prejudice)...

... It is very simple, a study made totally in today's fashion. Choose a subject and results someone will surely pay you for, choose the methods and sample to get such results, write the paperwork to get money, and publish.

I'll drink to that!

[Serpent]

Let's avoid discussing the non-linguistic aspects as much as possible (also, it's important to remain respectful when discussing the cognitive skills and how alcohol affects them...)

Oh and one more language-related skill they measured was "short term memory recall (20 words)".

On bmj.com, it's possible to post a response to the article. Some are very critical of the study's statistical relevance.