Cognitive gains in 7-month-old bilingual infants

Ágnes Melinda Kovács, Jacques Mehler

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Children exposed to bilingual input typically learn 2 languages without obvious difficulties. However, it is unclear how preverbal infants cope with the inconsistent input and how bilingualism affects early development. In 3 eye-tracking studies we show that 7-month-old infants, raised with 2 languages from birth, display improved cognitive control abilities compared with matched monolinguals. Whereas both monolinguals and bilinguals learned to respond to a speech or visual cue to anticipate a reward on one side of a screen, only bilinguals succeeded in redirecting their anticipatory looks when the cue began signaling the reward on the opposite side. Bilingual infants rapidly suppressed their looks to the first location and learned the new response. These findings show that processing representations from 2 languages leads to a domain-general enhancement of the cognitive control system well before the onset of speech.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)6556-6560
Number of pages5
JournalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume106
Issue number16
DOIs
StatePublished - 21 Apr 2009
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Cognitive development
  • Early bilingualism
  • Executive functions
  • Eyetracking
  • Infant cognition

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