Cognitive benefits in children enrolled in an early bilingual immersion school: A follow up study

Abstract

Recent findings suggested that an L2-immersion school experience produced some of the cognitive benefits associated with early bilingualism. However, the cognitive differences observed might possibly be due to greater cognitive development in the immersion group before the children started the immersion program. The present study thus aimed at revisiting these results in a follow-up design in which children about to begin an L2-immersion program and monolinguals were matched for cognitive development. Our results support the previous findings and this longitudinal study strongly confirms that only 3 years in an L2-immersion program enhance the performance of the attentional/executive control network.