Learning a new language as an adult is no easy task but infants can readily learn two languages without obvious difficulties. Despite being faced with two different vocabularies and sets of grammar, babies pick up both languages at the same speeds as those who learn just one. Far from becoming confused, it seems that babies actually develop superior mental skills from being raised in a bilingual environment.
By testing 38 infants, each just seven months old, Agnes Melinda Kovacs and Jacques Mehler have found that those who are raised in bilingual households have better “executive functions“. This loose term includes a number of higher mental abilities that allow us to control more basic ones, like attention and motor skills, in order to achieve a goal. They help us to plan for the future, focus our attention, and block out instinctive behaviours that would get in the way. Think of them as a form of mental control.
The role of these abilities in learning multiple languages is obvious – they allow us to focus on one language, while preventing the other from interfering. Indeed, children and adults who learn to use two languages tend to develop better executive functions. Now, Kovacs and Mehler have found that even from a very young age, before they can actually speak, children develop stronger executive functions if they grow up to the sound of two mother tongues. They show a degree of mental control that most people their age would struggle to match.
Kovacs and Mehler worked with 14 babies who heard two languages from birth, and 14 who had experienced just one. The babies saw a computer screen with two white squares and heard a short, made-up word. After that, a puppet appeared in one of the squares. There were nine words in total, and each time the puppet appeared in the same place. As the test went on, all the babies started focusing on the correct square more frequently, showing that they had learned to anticipate the puppet’s appearance. That’s a simple task that doesn’t require much in the way of executive function.
The next nine trials used a different puppet that appeared in the other square. The infants’ job was to learn that the link between word and puppet had changed, but only the bilingual ones were good at this. Unlike their monolingual peers, they learned to switch their attention to the other square. To Kovacs and Mehler, this is a sign of superior mental control – they had to override what they had previously learned in order to pick up something new. The monolingual infants, however, behaved as babies their age usually do – they stick with responses that had previously paid off, even if situations change.
In a second experiment, Kovacs and Mehler added subtle differences between the nonsense words before and after the switch, so that either the first or last two syllables were repeated. Other studies have found that infants can recognise these subtle changes and indeed, before the switch, the repeated syllable made it easier for all of them to learn the link between word and puppet. But after the switch, even this extra hint failed to help the monolinguals to anticipate the arrival of the puppet in its new location.
At seven months of age, babies can’t read yet, so the language skills of bilingual infants depends on hearing the spoken words of their parents. Nonetheless, their heightened executive functions also apply to other senses, including their vision. When the puppet’s appearance was prompted by three coloured shapes instead of nonsense words, the bilingual infants were still better at changing their predictive gazes when the puppet started flashing up on a different square.
The advanced abilities of bilingual children aren’t driven by richer parents who spend more time with them, for Kovacs and Mehler made sure that they recruited their babies from households with similar incomes. Nor do they reflect generally higher intelligence, for all the babies in this study learned that words or symbols predicted the appearance of a puppet.
Their only advantage was in being able to suppress something they had already learned and update their predictions using new information. Listening to two languages from birth accelerates the development of this mental control. To Kovacs and Mehler, these enhanced abilities are surely useful in allowing babies from bilingual households to separate their knowledge of two different languages without getting confused between them.
Like all good studies, this one raises more questions than it answers. Is there an age where learning two languages stops boosting a child’s executive functions? Clearly, starting while they’re in the crib works, but what if they’ve already reached school age? Would the benefits be even greater if the two languages were very similar, forcing the babies to work even harder to discriminate between them?
And what are the long-term effects of this early headstart? Do they persist, or does it all level out in the end? If the former, are their noticeable differences in mental control between cultures where bilingualism is incredibly common (e.g. the Dutch) and those where most people can’t conceive of having more than one language per head (e.g. the English)?
Reference: Kovacs, A., & Mehler, J. (2009). Cognitive gains in 7-month-old bilingual infants Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0811323106
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April 14th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Interesting–I’ll be interested to hear how those questions are answered by other studies.
April 14th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Another question: to what extent does this contribute to the success of the children of immigrants in America?
April 14th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
“Another question: to what extent does this contribute to the success of the children of immigrants in America?”
My guess is that it would only have some effect on those children whose parents were fluent in more than one language to begin with. I myself grew up speaking three languages simultaneously as did my siblings. All of us have always suspected that the way we process information is different from people who are merely monolingual.
My nephews and nieces having been born in Europe are growing up as polyglots speaking four or five languages and this is not uncommon among their peers.
My own son is only bilingual and is a very high functioning Aspergers child, I’m quite convinced that the fact that he is at least bilingual has been helpful to the development of his social skills. He also seems to have a natural talent for the language of mathematics.
April 15th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
This researches’ area seems quite interesting and I’m glad that someone took it on.
As far as I know bilingual children are confused in using (but not understanding) languages till the age of 5. It can be mixing grammar taken from one language with using vocabulary from the second one or using both languages in one sentence. Sounds funny but parents can be worried.
I wonder if there is any distinction between children who learn ‘similar’ mother languages (let’s say English and German) and those, whose parents languages are completely different (as English and Chineese)…
What I would love to know is how the multilingual brain develops. When child learns one mother language it is written in one part of cortex while the other languages have their own ‘places’ on the other hemisphere. What about the bilingual and their mother- and non-mother languages?
Is there any change in commissura magna structure? Or maybe coding and using informations is in other way than ‘normal’?
So many questions, so many possibilities…
I’m looking forward fresh news!
April 16th, 2009 at 11:47 am
This is a very interesting topic. If children benefit from speaking two languages then is there a connection between the number of languages a child is exposed to and their intelligence? This could make a very fascinating science fair project.
April 27th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
So would sign language count? Or only spoken, verbal language?
May 4th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
> “As far as I know bilingual children are confused in using (but not understanding) languages till the age of 5″
This depends on the child, but I personally would not use the word “confused”. My own children, both raised bilingually were never “confused” and from the day they started talking knew the difference between the two languages. Some bilingual children do “mix” languages, but they are not “confused” – just pulling from their wide vocabulary, and this is not uncommon and not a bad thing. It eventually goes away (but even some adults who live in a bilingual setting mix).
May 18th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Addressing the questions;
1. To what extent does this contribute to the success of children of immigrants in America?
2. What are the long-term effects of an early headstart?
I believe the results of this study to be true in my life’s experiences. I am a bilingual adult child of immigrant parents and I have had the opportunity to spend extended time living outside of the United States. Living in France, Italy and Spain, as well as the U.S. and Chile, has shown me that my ability to learn and interpret new languages is very good.
I enjoy the arts and computer technology and believe that, for similar reasons expressed in this study, the benefits gained from learning multiple languages have helped to strengthen my abilities in learning new concepts. This ability stands out when trying to learn new computer related languages such as html or flash, which I find analogous to linguistics.
I have two nieces, both born in the U.S., which are growing up as polyglots speaking multiple languages as well. It is amazing to see their social and linguistic abilities grow so rapidly as children interacting between two cultures. They both understand words, pictures and songs in both languages very well. I have found an informative study that provides interesting research into this topic, in relation to the two questions asked above.
A comprehensive study, recently published in January ‘09 by Ramirez; Perez; Valdez; and Halladdressed, provides additional research and insight into answering these questions. Controlling for the effects of income and education, the principal objective of the study was to investigate the long-term (35-36 years) effects of a k-3 bilingual-multicultural programme by studying the former participants and controls as adults in their 30’s and 40’s.
The study was too long to summarize here, but it is very in depth and can be found at: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a908968994~db=all~jumptype=rss