SECOND LANGUAGE
Second-Language Acquisition and
Bilingualism at an Early Age and the Impact
on Early Cognitive Development
Ellen Bialystok, PhD
York University, Canada
September 2017, 2nd rev. ed.
Introduction
The possibility that early bilingualism affects children’s language and cognitive development has long been a
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concern for parents and educators. In the first half of the 20 century, the prevailing view was that bilingualism
and second-language acquisition early in life made children confused and interfered with their ability to develop
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normal cognitive functions and succeed in educational environments. These ideas were dramatically reversed
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in a landmark study by Peal and Lambert that showed a general superiority of bilinguals over monolinguals in a
wide range of intelligence tests and aspects of school achievement. Recent research has been more balanced,
identifying areas in which bilingual children excel and others in which bilingualism has no effect on their
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development.
Subject
The question regarding the potential impact of bilingualism on children’s development has always been
important, but has increasingly emerged as a crucial concern for modern societies and for Canada in particular.
In addition to the official commitment to a national policy of second-language acquisition and bilingualism,
immigration has transformed Canada into a rich multilingual and multicultural nation. Public schools, especially
in major urban centres, are home to large numbers of children for whom English or French is a second
language. These children represent an enormous variety of home languages and often constitute the majority of
children in a single classroom. Therefore, it is imperative that we understand the impact of these language
backgrounds on children’s cognitive and educational futures.
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Problems
Information about the language, cognitive and educational development of children with varied language
backgrounds is essential to interpret the performance of these children in school and assess their development.
For example, children with limited proficiency in the language of schooling are certain to experience increased
difficulty in coping both academically and socially, and it is important to identify these difficulties in order to
understand what intervention or remedial approaches are needed.
Research Context
The research is typically conducted in classrooms, often settings containing both multilingual and monolingual
children. The context in which the bilingualism or second language occurs is important, even though it is not
always included as a formal aspect of research investigation. There is evidence that whether the child’s home
language is in a majority or minority situation, is valued in the community, and is used as a medium for literacy
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affects the child’s linguistic and cognitive outcomes. Therefore, the implications of the child’s language
experience should ideally be examined with careful attention to the social and linguistic factors that describe the
child’s educational environment.
Key Research Questions
The important issues that follow from linguistic diversity are the cognitive and educational outcomes for bilingual
children. First, it is necessary to establish whether language acquisition proceeds at the same rate and in the
same manner for children who are learning two languages simultaneously or are learning a second language
after having begun to master one. Second, are children able to acquire literacy skills at school if they are either
bilingual or learning a second language, especially if their home language is not the language of instruction?
Finally, are there consequences for normal cognitive development in terms of the child’s ability to acquire new
concepts or perform various calculations (e.g., arithmetic), especially if school instruction is in the child’s weaker
language?
Recent Research Results
There are three main outcomes from this research. First, for general language proficiency, bilingual children
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tend to have a smaller vocabulary in each language than monolingual children in their language. Nonetheless,
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their understanding of linguistic structure, called metalinguistic awareness, is at least as good and often better
than that of comparable monolinguals. Second, the acquisition of literacy skills in these children depends on the
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relationship between the two languages and the level of proficiency in the second language. Specifically,
children learning to read in two languages that share a writing system (e.g., English and French) show
accelerated progress in learning to read; children whose two languages are written in different systems (e.g.,
English and Chinese) show no special advantage, but neither do they demonstrate any deficit relative to
monolinguals. The benefit of learning to read in two languages, however, requires that children be bilingual and
not second-language learners whose competence in one of the languages is weak. Third, bilingual children
between four- and eight-years old demonstrate a large advantage over comparable monolinguals in solving
problems that require controlling attention to specific aspects of a display and inhibiting attention to misleading
aspects that are salient but associated with an incorrect response. This advantage is not confined to language
processing, but includes a variety of non-verbal tasks that require controlled attention and selectivity in such
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problems as forming conceptual categories, seeing alternative images in ambitious figures, and
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understanding the difference between the appearance and functional reality of a misleading object.
These differences persist across the lifespan conferring cognitive benefits to bilinguals at all ages, and even
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providing cognitice reserve that allows bilinguals to function independently even through the early stages of
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dementia.
Conclusion
The results of these studies demonstrate that childhood bilingualism is a significant experience that has the
power to influence the course and efficiency of children’s development. The most surprising outcome is that
these influences are not confined to the linguistic domain, where such influence would be expected, but extend
as well to non-verbal cognitive abilities. In most cases, the child’s degree of involvement with a second
language, defined as the difference between bilingualism and second-language acquisition, is an important
variable that determines both the degree and type of influence that is found. Three patterns of influence were
noted in these studies. One outcome is that bilingualism makes no difference, and monolingual and bilingual
children develop in the same way and at the same rate. This was found for cognitive problems such as memory-
span development and language problems such as phonological awareness. The second is that bilingualism
disadvantages children in some way. The primary example of this is in the development of vocabulary in each
language. The third pattern, and the most prevalent in our studies, is that bilingualism is a positive force that
enhances children’s cognitive and linguistic development, improving access to literacy if the two writing systems
correspond and development of general executive processes for all bilingual children solving a wide range of
non-verbal problems requiring attention and control. These executive control abilities are at the centre of
intelligent thought.
Implications
Parents are often concerned that using a non-community language as the language of their home will
disadvantage their children. This program of research provides solid evidence that the overwhelming effect of
bilingualism in the home is positive. The disadvantages are relatively minor and easily overcome. The
implications for schooling are more complex. Children’s success in school is strongly dependent on their
proficiency in the language of instruction, a relationship that holds for important linguistic activities (e.g.,
learning to read), non-verbal computational subjects (e.g., mathematics), and content-based curricula (e.g.,
social studies). In all these cases, children must be skilled in the forms and meanings of the school language
and be competent readers of that language. Bilingual children may not be at the same level as their
monolingual peers, and second-language learners for whom English or French is not their home language may
have not built up adequate skills in the instructional language to succeed in schools, although the vocabulary
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gap between monolingual and bilingual children disappears if only school-based words are considered. The
evidence for the overwhelming positive benefit of bilingualism, together with evidence that bilingual children are
not cognitively handicapped, indicates an important role for schools in providing a means for these children to
build up their language skills in the school language so that they can be full participants in the classroom and
reap the most positive benefit from their educational experience.
References
1. review in Hakuta K. Mirror of language: the debate on bilingualism. New York, NY: Basic Books; 1986.
2. Macnamara JT. Bilingualism and primary education: a study of Irish experience. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press; 1966.
3. Peal E, Lambert WE. The relation of bilingualism to intelligence. Psychological Monographs 1962;76(27, Whole No. 546):1-23.
4. Barac R, Moreno S, Bialystok E. Behavioral and electrophysiological differences in executive control between monolingual and bilingual
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children. Child Development 2016;87:1277-1290.
5. Cummins J. Linguistic interdependence and the educational development of bilingual children. Review of Educational Research
1979;49(2):222-251.
6. Bialystok E, Luk G. Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual and bilingual adults. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
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2003;24(1):27-44.
8. Bialystok E. Levels of bilingualism and levels of linguistic awareness. Developmental Psychology 1988;24(4):560-567.
9. Bialystok E, Luk G, Kwan E. Bilingualism, biliteracy, and learning to read: Interactions among languages and writing systems. Scientific
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Psychology 2005:97(4):580-590.
11. Bialystok E, Martin MM. Attention and inhibition in bilingual children: Evidence from the dimensional change card sort task. Developmental
Science 2004;7(3):325-339.
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13. Bialystok E, Senman L. Executive processes in appearance-reality tasks: The role of inhibition of attention and symbolic representation.
Child Development 2004;75(2):562-579.
14. Bialystok E. The bilingual adaptation: How minds accommodate experience. Psychological Bulletin 2017;143:233-262.
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