The study, published today in the journal Child Development, <\/em>examined the effects of specific language pairings on children\u2019s verbal and non-verbal development, taking into account language similarities, cultural background and educational experiences.<\/p>\n Researchers compared more than 100 six-year-old monolingual and bilingual children (English monolinguals, Chinese-English bilinguals, French-English bilinguals, and Spanish-English bilinguals), measuring their verbal and non-verbal cognitive development. The children were all public school students from the GTA and of similar socio-economic background.<\/p>\n The study reports that bilingual children differ from each other and from monolingual children in how they develop language and cognitive skills through the early school years<\/strong>. Children who grow up speaking two languages generally have slower language acquisition in each language than children raised speaking just one language. However, they have better \u201cmetalinguistic\u201d development that gives them a deeper understanding of the structure of language, a skill that\u2019s important for literacy. They also perform better on tests of non-verbal executive control, which measure the ability to focus attention where necessary without being distracted, and to shift attention when required.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cOur research shows that it doesn\u2019t matter what the other language is \u2013 all bilingual children have an equal advantage over monolinguals in terms of non-verbal cognitive control,\u201d says study co-author Ellen Bialystok, Distinguished Research Professor in York\u2019s Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople always ask if the languages themselves matter \u2013 and now we can definitively say, \u2018no.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In terms of language acquisition, however, the study shows that some types of bilingualism \u2013 particularly where the languages are similar in origin \u2013 may have slight advantages over others<\/strong>. For example, Spanish-English bilinguals outperformed Chinese-English bilinguals and monolinguals on a test of English phonological awareness.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is really no generalized verbal outcome of bilingualism,\u201d says Bialystok. \u201cIn terms of the language consequences of bilingualism, we found it matters very much what the other language is, what language is used in school, and likely other factors as well,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Even though bilingual children may be somewhat slower in learning the vocabulary of each of their languages, Bialystok emphasizes that the benefits of speaking more than one language far outweigh any drawbacks.<\/strong> In previous studies, she and other researchers established that bilingualism postpones symptoms of dementia such as Alzheimer\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n \u201cThe benefits of bilingualism are evident in every stage of life, from early childhood through to one\u2019s senior years. If children are in a position to learn and speak another language, parents should definitely do everything to encourage that,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n The study, \u201cBilingual Effects on Cognitive and Linguistic Development: Role of Language, Cultural Background, and Education,\u201d is co-authored by Raluca Barac, a PhD student in York\u2019s Faculty of Health. The research is supported by the US National Institutes of Health.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the York University press release: All bilingual children \u2013 regardless of the languages they speak \u2013 show cognitive advantages over their English-only peers, although they may experience weakness in… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[45,18,160,74,73,25,19,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1198"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1200,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions\/1200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/KidStudying.jpg\" "\\"child")
All bilingual children \u2013 regardless of the languages they speak \u2013 show cognitive advantages over their English-only peers, although they may experience weakness in areas like vocabulary acquisition<\/strong>, finds a new study out of York University.<\/p>\n