Department of Health Sciences Faculty Articles
Title
Memory in a Monolingual Mode: When Are Bilinguals at a Disadvantage?
ISBN or ISSN
0749-596X
Volume
26
Issue
4
Publication Date / Copyright Date
8-1987
First Page
392
Last Page
405
Publisher
Academic Press
DOI Number
10.1016/0749-596X(87)90098-2
Abstract
Comparisons of bilinguals and monolinguals have typically found poorer performance by bilinguals in a variety of memory tasks. However, these studies have used bilinguals who were not native speakers of the monolingual's language, and who were often required to process both languages during the session. In the present study, Native English-speaking bilinguals were compared to English monolinguals on four verbal memory tasks: episodic recognition, lexical decision, object naming, and free recall. Only English words were used in the session to avoid activation of the second language. There were no differences in accuracy between groups on any task. Bilinguals were slower than monolinguals, but only for the list recognition and lexical decision tasks, where language-specific, data-driven processing predominates.
Disciplines
Medicine and Health Sciences
Keywords
Bilingual, Monolingual, Memory Tasks, Native Speakers, Episodic Recognition, Lexical Decision, Object Naming, Free Recall, English, Data-Driven
NSUWorks Citation
Ransdell, Sarah Ellen PhD and Fischler, Ira, "Memory in a Monolingual Mode: When Are Bilinguals at a Disadvantage?" (1987). Department of Health Sciences Faculty Articles. 231.
https://nsuworks.nova.edu/hpd_hs_facarticles/231
