According to research presented in the International Journal of Bilingualism, not only do bilingual children have an enhanced ability to process sounds, therefore accelerating their learning capabilities, but they also use two completely separate sound systems to learn languages.

“It has commonly been debated whether a bilingual child has one large set of sounds from both languages or, conversely, two separate sound systems,” said Ithaca College researcher Skott Freedman to Science Daily. “A way of testing this theory is to measure a child’s language productions in both languages using some measure of complexity and then comparing the two languages.”

Previous research into this theory was done examining sound sets between English-speaking and Hungarian-speaking children back in 2010. The results of this study supported the hypothesis that bilingual children had a dual-process mind, learning two completely different sound sets for different languages. Freedman’s research further explored those results, this time looking at English-speaking and Spanish-speaking children.

His results also confirmed the dual-process learning ability, adding some deeper insights into how bilingual children pick up languages so quickly.

“While bilingual children produced more complex forms in Spanish than in English, they nonetheless approximated English and Spanish to the same degree,” said Freedman. “Perhaps while learning a language, some inner algorithm determines how much one needs to articulate in order to be understood regardless of the different kinds of sounds between languages. Otherwise, children should have been more easily understood in Spanish.”

The final study results indicate bilingual children not only learn two different words at the same time, but they keep these words completely separate within their inner thought process.

Freedman indicates this suggests there is no harm in exposing a child to multiple languages from birth; some parents and experts have suggested otherwise out of fear of overwhelming the child.

Other benefits for bilingual children

The ability to learn and process multiple languages easily and efficiently is not the only benefit to being bilingual. The American Psychiatric Association indicates bilingual children have better cognitive skills compared to peers, and research from Northwestern University supports previous findings that demonstrated bilingual children showed reduced levels of anxiety, loneliness, and poor self-esteem, as well as a reduction of negative externalizing behaviors such as arguing, fighting, or acting impulsively.

According to the experts, part of the reason for lower levels of social stress among bilingual children had to do with the ability to understand and accept the multiple cultures which came along with learning multiple languages.

The DANA Foundation indicates because a bilingual person constantly switches between languages when he or she speaks, the brain is kept constantly active, which strengthens certain functions.

Bilingual children can expect to see mental health benefits such as:

• Improved attention to detail
• Ability to focus on important details
• Early onset of conflict management skills
• Improved memory
• Improved executive control
• Protection against certain illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease
• Lessening of symptoms associated with cognitive decline
• Improved social skills
• Reduced stress
• Reduced risk for depression



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