Cowplanet

The research student of the LSCP (see my post from Dec. 18, 2010) gave me the link to an article about research on cognitive abilities in seven-month-old infants, a study that compared monolingual and bilingual babies:

Cognitive gains in seven-month-old bilingual infants

In a nutshell, the article describes a series of experiments that had monolingual and bilingual babies learn a rule and then changed that rule. Monolingual babies had more trouble adjusting to the new rule than bilingual babies.

The authors conclude that the cognitive abilities bilingual babies develop even in the preverbal phase (i.e. before they start to talk) and that are necessary to block out (inhibit) one language while using the other, facilitates the adaptation to changing rules.

I wonder how that applies in the daily life of my little girl who, by the way, just turned seven months old today.

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