It may be a good idea for parents to enroll their children in language courses at a young age, as a new study suggests that bilingualism will give children the extra edge in their academic endeavors.

New findings published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology found that children as young as 24 months will be able to develop a vocabulary in two languages. Previous studies have linked the cognitive benefits with knowing two languages, but none had been able to determine the young age at which the child would comprehend another tongue.

The researchers took both bilingual and unilingual toddlers and had them complete five language and cognitive tests.

"Bilingual children outperformed their unilingual counterparts on tasks where they were distracted," said senior researcher Diane Poulin-Dubois, a psychology professor at Concordia University and associate director of the Centre for Research in Human Development. "The small bilingual advantage that we observed in our 24-month-old bilinguals is probably due to a combination of infants' experience listening to and using their two languages."