The effects of bilingualism on memory encoding and retrieval in English-Chinese bilinguals.

Abstract

Research on to the cognitive differences in bilinguals, of languages with similar historical backgrounds, and monolinguals has been ongoing. This study investigated if these established differences, in the working memory, can be extrapolated to a language pair that is dissimilar historically, and to find out if the level of bilingual proficiency had moderating effects on these relationships. Results show that the differences can be extrapolated to English-Chinese bilinguals, and the level of bilingual proficiency had some moderating effects. Interestingly, English-Chinese bilinguals were found to have better executive control and adopt a different lexical selection strategy, implying greater competence in their working memory. English-Chinese bilinguals could have the possibility of having better human memory, as the foundation long-term memory is built on the capacity of the working memory.