BILINGUAL children may have the edge over their monolingual peers in reading.
Ellen Bialystok, a psychologist at York University in Toronto, Canada, compared the reading abilities of two groups of four and five-year-olds. One group spoke only English, while the other spoke either French or Chinese as well.
Bialystok showed the children two pictures: a dog and a tree. She also showed them a card with the word 鈥渢ree鈥� written on it and placed it under the tree picture. The children were then distracted while the card was moved to beneath the dog picture.
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When Bialystok asked the children what the card said, only 33 per cent of the monolingual children got it right鈥攎ost of them thought it said 鈥渄og鈥�. But 80 per cent of the bilingual children were correct, Bialystok reports in the latest issue of Developmental Psychology(vol 33, p 429). 鈥淏ilingual kids realise earlier that when you write something down, it鈥檚 the word that contains the meaning,鈥� she says.