Hi,
I think the short answer is that vocabulary learning might take a little longer in early childhood (as there are arguably two lexicons in play) but as there's no upper limit to vocabulary size this disappears over time. Benefits for later cognitive functioning have been attested, but with important provisos.
A good place to look is NALDIC (the National Association for Language Development in the Curriculum) - their website has quite a lot of information and they're fairly good at responding to quick queries on twitter (@EAL_naldic or www.naldic.org.uk).
The section on 'Bilingual Acquisition' in Li Wei's Bilingualism Reader (Routledge) might be useful, as might some sections of Colin Baker's Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) - they might be a little introductory for your purposes but they're good for a quick overview.
Feyisa Demie (at Lambeth LA) has written a couple of booklets on the time taken for young bilinguals to acquire English vocabulary. I haven't seen them on PDF but he would probably be happy to send you hard copies.
There's also quite a pile of current research articles ... I'd be happy to share some off-list if you like.
Best wishes,
Rob
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