Bilingualism is very common in today's world. The reasons for this are usually family, social or career-related. When we think about bilingualism, we almost always think of individuals who already speak languages, but we rarely think of those who are not yet able to speak – infants in the preverbal period. The same applies to every individual – they are equipped with the ability to acquire language, which is activated immediately after birth. Language acquisition in preverbal infants is a complex process involving perceptual, phonetic, and cognitive mechanisms. Despite the fact that this is an extremely complex process, we have evidence that they can acquire (at least) one more language during this period. In recent decades, the topic of bilingual infants who have successfully acquired two languages has raised many questions about their advantages and disadvantages in terms of cognitive functions.
The aim of this paper is to review studies that address precisely these issues. The paper examines the question of the cognitive advantages of bilingual infants through a historical review, theoretical framework, review of studies and discussion. The selected studies contain or refer to experiments that have ledto the results that speak not only to the cognitive advantages of bilingual infants, but also to their differences compared to monolingual infants, and question the cognitive advantage.
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