Bilingual Babies Get Head Start--Before They Can Talk by James Owen

In his article "Bilingual Babies Get Head Start--Before They Can Talk," James Owen suggests that babies in bilingual houses may have a head start in life. A team of scientists in Italy tested seven-month old babies and concluded that babies who hear more then one language get a mental boost. Bilingual babies are able to enhance their "cognitive ability to a brain selecting the right tools for the right operation." Monolingual babies gain this ability later in their young lives. The bilingual babies are able to distinguish different sounds of different language at an early age, but this experiment doest not state the bilingual babies are smarter than monolingual babies. Single-language babies eventually have the ability to catch up with the multilingual babies.

Discussion Questions:

Clarification: Are all bilingual babies at an advantage or are there only specific babies that get this advantage?

Application: What kind of advantages do bilingual babies have over monolingual babies if there is any?

Link: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090413-bilingual-babies.html