However, subsequent studies have either failed to replicate this finding ( Humphrey and Valian 2012 Kalia et al. This hints at a relationship between early bilingual experience and cognitive development. ( 2011) found that early bilinguals (43 university students who acquired their second language (L2) before age 10 years) demonstrated greater inhibitory control than late bilinguals (43 university students who acquired L2 after age 10 years). 2011) have postulated a link between this change in activation levels during language production and the ability to consciously and deliberately override the tendency to produce a dominant or automatic response, such as the name of a colour word ( Stroop 1935). This measure was selected because it is believed that when words in one language are activated in the bilingual brain during language production, the activation of words in the other language(s) is suppressed, which means that over developmental time, the process that suppresses activation in the language domain is strengthened in the bilingual brain from regular use ( Green 1998). The first of these studies compared the two groups on inhibitory control: the ability to inhibit dominant, automatic, or prepotent responses ( Luk et al. Moreover, the few studies that did compare early bilinguals with late bilinguals report mixed results. This is because most investigations into the relationship between bilingual language experience and cognitive abilities compared bilinguals with monolinguals 1, rather than early bilinguals with late bilinguals. However, it is not known whether these early adaptations to bilingual environments in the attentional domain constrain cognitive development more generally. These data hint at the possibility that bilingual environments constrain the early development of the attentional system with long term consequences. ![]() Specifically, the ‘early bilingual’ adults redirected attention faster than the ‘late bilingual’ adults, a finding which parallels the observation that infants from bilingual homes redirect attention faster than infants from monolingual homes. ( 2021) found that the early bilingual adaptations in the attentional domain appear to last into adulthood. Furthermore, by comparing adults who learned their second language early in development with adults who learned their second language later in development, D’Souza et al. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that infants’ attentional processes adapt to the complexity of their language environment through greater exploration of the visual environment ( D’Souza and D’Souza 2021). 2015) and 7- to 9-month-old infants from bilingual homes redirected their visual attention faster and more frequently than infants from monolingual homes ( Dal Ben et al. Specifically, 6-month-old infants from bilingual homes looked longer at a novel visual stimulus than infants from monolingual homes ( Singh et al. Recent studies suggest that mere exposure to a bilingual environment can affect an infant’s attentional development. However, the finding may depend on how bilingualism is operationalized, and thus needs to be replicated with a larger sample and more detailed measures. These results suggest that the difference in fluid intelligence between bilinguals and monolinguals is not a consequence of bilingualism per se, but of early adaptive processes. The groups did not significantly differ on a proxy of socioeconomic status. Performance on the RAPM was greater in bilinguals than monolinguals, and greater in ‘early bilinguals’ (adults who learned their second language between 0–6 years) than ‘late bilinguals’ (adults who learned their second language after age 6 years). Fluid intelligence (the ability to solve novel reasoning problems, independent of acquired knowledge) is highly correlated with numerous cognitive abilities across development. To test this hypothesis, 170 adult participants were administered a well-established (non-verbal) measure of fluid intelligence: Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices (RAPM). If they do, then we would expect that bilingual adults who learned their second language early in life would score more highly across cognitive tasks than bilingual adults who learned their second language later in life. However, it is not known whether the early adaptations in the attentional domain alter more general cognitive abilities. Emerging evidence suggests that early bilingual experience constrains the development of attentional processes in infants, and that some of these early bilingual adaptations could last into adulthood.
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