Study of Bilingual Children Finds “Cognitive Edge”
when Children Learn French.
Some experts say when children learn French, they build sophisticated intellect.
Children who learn French or another foreign language develop greater cognitive skills in specific areas than their monolingual peers, according to research presented to the American Society for Neuroscience.
Professor Laura-Ann Petitto, PhD, a cognitive neuroscientist at Dartmouth, a prestigious American university, conducted the study of bilingual children who learned French and English. Petitto has explored the biological foundations of language throughout her 30-year academic career.
In a news release from the American Society for Neuroscience, Dr. Petitto observes that bilingual children execute specific cognitive exercises more accurately than monolinguals. “Being bilingual,” Dr. Petitto says, “can give you a cognitive edge.”
How sharp is that edge? Do children who learn French or another language become “brighter” than their peers who speak only English? These topics have not gone undebated. Thus far, experts have not offered definitive answers to these questions, but further research is already underway.
What are the cognitive benefits when children learn French?
Dr. Petitto and colleagues examined a set of monolingual children aged 4 to 6 who spoke only English or French, and compared them to bilingual children who could communicate in both languages. These groups were organised by age and language proficiency.
The children were presented with an experimental exercise known as the “Simon Task,” which measures their ability to process abstract and contradictory information. In the Simon Task, coloured squares flash from side-to-side on a computer screen, and the children are asked to choose whether it’s a blue or red square. If blue, they press a button on their left. If red, they press a button on the right. Some children inevitably grow confused when they see a blue square, for example, on their right-hand side, and are expected to press the left-hand button.
The scores of the bilingual children were reportedly much better than their monolingual peers, suggesting that when children learn French and English, they are developing superior mental sophistication.
According to Pettito, the difference in skill levels can be attributed to the increased cognitive demands placed upon children who learn French and English. Such children develop greater mental dexterity by continually moving back and forth between two languages.
For a bilingual child to identify an object, such as a cup of tea, his or her brain must first look up the meaning of the object—saying ‘cup of tea’ in English, for example—while suppressing the equivalent words in the child’s other native tongue. Petitto notes that this simultaneous selection-and-suppression requires “heightened computational analysis.”
The “Stroop Test” reveals further insights on bilingual children who learn French
Dr. Ellen Bialystok, a renowned professor of psychology at Canada’s York University, worked on the “Simon Task” project with Dr. Petitto. Dr. Bialystok has also published several of her own studies on the cognitive effects of language acquisition.
Speaking with Cookie magazine in 2006, Bialystok observed that some people believe exposing children to multiple languages will only lead to confusion. However, Dr. Bialystok confidently declared that there is “not a shred of evidence” to support these claims.
In fact, her own research has demonstrated—again and again—that children who learn two languages, like French and English, actually outperform monolinguals on specific cognitive tasks. For example, Bialystok mentions the “Stroop Test,” in which participants view a card that contains a confusing or contradictory word —like the word “yellow” written in red ink. In experimental trials, bilingual children tend to do much better at correctly naming the colour observed. Similar to the Simon Task, the Stroop Test evaluates levels of sorting ability, attention control, and processing complex information. In general, Cookie reports, bilingual children aged 4 are better at performing these types of “executive functions” than monolinguals aged 5.
The debate over the precise, real-world value of these cognitive benefits is ongoing in the field of neuroscience.
Meanwhile, many educators and linguistic experts have concluded that there are no good reasons whatsoever to delay foreign language education. Rather, it is widely accepted that when children learn French or any second language at an early age, there is a greater likelihood that they will achieve fluency and a native accent.
Dr. Petitto agrees that young children who learn French or another foreign language will not experience confusion or be otherwise adversely affected with regard to their abilities in speaking and reading in English. She addressed these issues when interviewed at an American linguistics conference offered by the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. “I hope to make clear with regard to the architecture of the human brain,” Petitto said, “that it is not set to learn only one language.”
The human brain – even that of a very young child – is equipt to handle more than one language. Indeed, Petitto observes, “We have multiple ways and multiple languages.”
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