Toddler's edge: A second language

MONTREAL, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- Benefits of being bilingual are evident in toddlers much earlier than reported in previous studies, Canadian and French researchers said.

Researchers at Concordia University, York University and the Universite de Provence in France tested the understanding of English and French words among 24-month-old children to see if bilingual toddlers had acquired comparable vocabulary in each language.

"By 24 months, we found bilingual children had already acquired a vocabulary in each of their two languages and gained some experience in switching between English or French," senior researcher Diane Poulin-Dubois of Concordia University and of the Centre for Research in Human Development said in a statement.

The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, found bilingual toddlers outperformed others on tasks in which they were distracted, and suggested exposing toddlers to a second language early in their development may enhance attention control.

"The small bilingual advantage that we observed in our 24-month-old bilinguals is probably due to a combination of infants' experience listening to and using their two languages," Poulin-Dubois said.

Poulin-Dubois and colleagues assessed 63 toddlers divided into groups of unilingual and bilingual. Parents completed a language exposure interview and vocabulary checklists ad children completed five basic language and cognitive tests.