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Increased processing speed in young adult bilinguals: evidence from source memory judgments*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

ANGELA GRANT  and
NANCY DENNIS
ANGELA GRANT*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University
NANCY DENNIS
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University
*
Address for Correspondence: Angela Grant, 454 Moore Building, Department of Psychology, University Park, PA 16802, USAamc497@psu.edu
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Abstract

Although many studies have investigated the consequences of bilingualism on cognitive control, few have examined the impact of bilingualism on other cognitive domains, such as memory. Of these studies, most have focused on item memory and none have examined the role of bilingualism in source memory (i.e., the memory for contextual details from a previous encounter with a stimulus). In our study, young adult bilinguals and monolinguals completed a source memory test, whose different conditions were designed to stress working memory and inhibitory control. Bilinguals performed significantly faster than monolinguals across all conditions without compromising accuracy, and also showed an overall speed advantage on the Flanker task. We interpret these processing speed advantages within the context of current models of bilingual production.

Keywords

Bilingualismprocessing speedsource memoryinhibitory control
Type
Research Notes
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 20 , Special Issue 2: Cross-linguistic Priming in Bilinguals: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Language Processing, Acquisition and Change , March 2017 , pp. 327 - 336
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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