“Bilingual babies are smarter” – Experts Explain

Bilingual babies benefit from multiple advantages when it comes to cognitive development.

It seems the little ones of parents who speak two languages in front of them from day one get bored of familiar images quicker and tend to prefer observing the novelty.

This is a known predictor of better pre-school development, such as high IQ test scores, according to experts.

The benefits for babies exposed to two languages were discovered in a Singaporean birth cohort study.

A team of investigators and clinician scientists found a cognitive advantage emerges early in bilingual babies – and is not specific to a particular language.

Findings came from a long term cohort study (one involving subjects who share an event together over a stretch of time).

Singaporean mothers and their infants took part, and results showed that six-month old bilingual babies recognised familiar images faster than those brought up in monolingual homes.

They also paid more attention to novel images compared to toddlers who were exposed to just one language.

For example, all babies were shown a coloured image of either a bear or a wolf.

For half the group, the bear was made to become the familiar image (one they were shown multiple times) while the wolf was the novel one, and vice versa.

The study showed that bilingual babies got bored of familiar images faster than monolingual babies.

The findings were published online in the latest issue of scientific journal Child Development, according to Science Daily.

Past studies show that the rate at which an infant becomes bored of a familiar image and develops a preference for novelty is a common predictor of better pre-school developmental outcomes.

Bilingual babies also stared for longer periods of time at the novel image than their monolingual counterparts, demonstrating a preference for novelty.

Other studies show this is linked with improved performance in later IQ and vocabulary tests around the 4+ age mark.

A bilingual baby encounters more novel (i.e. new, unknown) linguistic information than its monolingual peers.

A six-month old in a bilingual home is not just learning another language; it is learning two languages while learning to discern between the two languages it is hearing.

Culled from dailymail.co.uk