Bilingualism alters infants’ cortical organization for attentional orienting mechanisms

A bilingual environment is associated with changes in the brain's structure and function. Some suggest that bilingualism also improves higher-cognitive functions in infants as young as 6-months, yet whether this effect is associated with changes in the infant brain remains unknown. In the present study, we measured brain activity using functional near-infrared spectroscopy in monolingual- and bilingual-raised 6- and 10-month-old infants. Infants completed an orienting attention task, in which a cue was presented prior to an object appearing on the same (Valid) or opposite (Invalid) side of a display. Task performance did not differ between the groups but neural activity did. At 6-months, both groups showed greater activity for Valid (> Invalid) trials in frontal regions (left hemisphere for bilinguals, right hemisphere for monolinguals). At 10-months, bilinguals showed greater activity for Invalid (> Valid) trials in bilateral frontal regions, while monolinguals showed greater brain activity for Valid (> Invalid) trials in left frontal regions. Bilinguals' brain activity trended with their parents' reporting of dual-language mixing when speaking to their child. These findings are the first to indicate how early (dual) language experience can alter the cortical organization underlying broader, non-linguistic cognitive functions during the first year of life.