Bilingual Infants Are Capable Of Differentiating Between Languages, Princeton Study Finds

Infants growing up bilingual have the capability to differentiate between the two languages, even when they are as young as 20 months old, a new study published Tuesday by Princeton University found. Researchers at Princeton Baby Lab studied how babies and young children learn to see, talk and comprehend the world. International researchers teamed up with researchers from Princeton University and found infants as young as 20 months of age could accurately and efficiently process two languages separately. "By 20 months, bilingual babies already know something about the differences between words in their two languages," Casey Lew-Williams, an assistant professor of psychology and co-director of the Princeton Baby Lab, said. "They do not think that'dog' and'chien' [French] are just two versions of the same thing," he added.