Bilingual toddlers have edge over unilingual kids: study

MONTREAL – Bilingual children as young as the age of two start showing greater "cognitive flexibility" than toddlers who are unilingual, suggests a new study by researchers from Concordia and York universities.

The research appears to confirm what supporters of bilingualism have long argued: that learning two languages – rather than "stuffing" the brains of children with too many words – actually gives them an edge over kids who speak only English or French. Previous research has demonstrated this bilingual benefit in five- and seven-year-olds, but the Concordia study shows it starts much earlier than expected.

"Bilingualism will give these children a bit of a head start, some kind of advantage when they start school," said senior researcher Diane Poulin-Dubois, a psychology professor at Concordia. "Academic performance and school readiness are based on many abilities, but one thing is for sure: this is one ability that will be helpful."

For the study, the researchers ran groups of bilingual and unilingual toddlers through a battery of cognitive tests disguised as games. In one test, the toddlers were asked to identify the images of apples, bananas and oranges.

To challenge the toddlers, smaller images of the fruits were placed in a mismatched order inside larger pictures of apples, bananas and oranges. The children were then asked to point out each of the small fruits.

The researchers found that the unilingual group of 30 toddlers scored accurately in 31 per cent of the so-called shape stroop tests, while the bilingual group scored correctly 50 per cent of the time. There were 33 bilingual children.

The difference between the two groups in the other cognitive tests was not statistically relevant, but Poulin-Dubois said that the results from the shape stroop test were significant and suggest greater cognitive flexibility at the tender age of two.

"Exposing toddlers to a second language in their development provides a bilingual advantage that enhances attention control," Poulin-Dubois said.

She cautioned, however, that bilingualism doesn’t necessarily produce greater IQs in children. What’s more, further studies must be carried out to determine whether bilingualism from an early age will translate into a superior academic performance.

The Concordia findings were published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.