Research by Canadian and French scientists reveals that bilingual two-year-olds have significant cognitive benefits "much earlier than previous studies have shown." The findings are published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology .
In their experiments, Diane Poulin-Dubois and her colleagues analyzed the comprehension of English and French in a group of 63 24-month-old children, to see if those who were bilingual showed differences. And they found that at 2 years of age "bilingual children had already acquired a vocabulary in each of their two languages, while at the same time showing a certain skill when changing from one to the other".
In addition, they observed that the bilingual children passed the cognitive tests with better results than the rest , who in many cases "were distracted." According to the authors, this increased attention from bilingual children could be due to the fact that "they are used to hearing and using both languages".
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