Bilingual Memory

Bilingual Memory and Hierarchical Models: A Case for Language Dominance
1. Roberto R. Heredia - Center for Research in Language, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California
2. "Early researchers addressed this question at a general level by posing that there are separate memory stores if the two languages are learned in different settings (e.g., home vs. school), but a common memory store if the languages are learned simultaneously in the same setting (Ervin & Osgood, 1954)."
3. "Recent research, however, has ad dressed this classic question by focusing more closely on how the bilingual's two languages are related in real time and what mechanisms and processes are involved during word retrieval and language processing."
4. LEXICAL AND CONCEPTUAL REPRESENTATIONS
  1. "The present view of bilingual ism starts with the premise that there is a separate lexical store (dic tionary) for each of the bilingual's two languages. The lexicons are said to contain language-specific information about, for example, orthography and pronunciation."
  2. "It is further assumed that in addition to separate lexicons, there is a single conceptual memory store subserving the bilingual's two languages."
    1. "The conceptual store en compasses knowledge about word meanings and about the basic facts of the world (e.g., Potter, So, Eckardt, & Feldman, 1984).
  3. "According to this view, the word house would be represented in an English mental dictionary according to its physical features. Likewise, its translation casa would be represented in a Spanish mental dictionary. At the conceptual level, these translation equivalents overlap be cause of their shared similarities."
5. HIERARCHICAL MODELS
  1. Early Hierarchical Models
    1. Word Association Model
      1. "[This model] posed a memory architecture in which the bilingual's two languages interact at the lexical level (dictionary level), based on translation equivalents (Potter et al., 1984)."
        "The bilingual's second language was viewed as subordinate to the first language. So, upon exposure to a second-language word, the bilingual would have to translate it into a first-language word in order to know its semantic properties."
    2. Concept Mediation Model
      1. “[This model] assumed that the bilingual's two languages operate independently from each other.”
        “According to this model, both lexicons are connected directly (independently) to the conceptual memory store common to the two languages.”
        “A bilingual can activate the meaning of a second-language word with equal ease whether or not the word is translated.”
    3. “An important feature of these models is the assumption that the second-language lexicon is smaller than the first language lexicon. This difference in lexicon size reflects the notion that during second-language learning, bilinguals know more words in their first language than their second language (Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”
    4. "One possible reconciliation of the two models is that they describe two different types of bilinguals."
      1. “Perhaps the word association model best describes a bilingual with limited proficiency in a second language.”
      2. “In contrast, the concept mediation model describes a bilingual at a higher level of second-language proficiency.”
  2. THE REVISED HIERARCHICAL MODEL
    1. “More recent evidence suggests that there are indeed language processing differences between fluent and less fluent bilinguals.”
      1. “These differences may have implications for these proposed memory models.”
      2. “It is possible that at early stages of second-language acquisition, bilinguals utilize strategies similar to those posed by the word association model, associating every new second-language word learned with the first-language translation.”
      3. “In contrast, the more experienced bilinguals become with the second language, the more independent their two lexicons become, as predicted by the concept mediation model.”
        Kroll and Stewart (1990)
        “Given that bilingual memory representation may be a function of second-language proficiency and translation direction, Kroll and Stewart (1994) incorporated both the association model and the concept mediation model into a general model of bilingual memory organization.”
        “The main difference be tween Kroll and Stewart's revised hierarchical model (RHM) and the models described earlier is that it proposes differences in strength of connections between the bilingual's two lexicons and between the lexicons and the conceptual store.”
        “Presumably, the lexical link from the second-language to the first-language lexicon is a strong connection that is fast and automatic and that reflects the associative nature of learning the second language.”
        “Stronger lexical links from the second to the first language than in the reverse direction reflect the bilingual's ease of translation.”
        “This link is assumed to be sensitive to processes that require physical or perceptual characteristics of word translation equivalents.”
        “The connection from the first- to the second-language lexicon is assumed to be weaker because of lack of translation practice. However, this link is hypothesized to be sensitive to semantic information.”
        “In addition to the bilingual's two lexicons being connected, each lexicon is linked to the conceptual store.”
        “In the RHM, the link from the first-language lexicon to the conceptual store is said to be stronger than the link from the second language lexicon to the conceptual store.”
        “It would be theoretically possible for fluent bilinguals to develop a strong connection between the conceptual store and their second lexicon with enough practice in the second language. However, it seems that even at high levels of proficiency, the connections between the first- and second-language lexicons remain active (cf. Dufour & Kroll, 1995).”
  3. Accessed from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283569070_Bilingual_Memory_Storage_Compound-Coordinate_and_Derivatives (Date of Access: 11/10/2016)
Bilingual Minds - 'Bilingualism and Memory'
1. Ellen Bialystok, Fergus I.M. Craik, David W. Green and Tamar H. Gollan - Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Vol. 10, No. 3 (DECEMBER 2009), pp. 89-129
2. "Since being bilingual necessarily entails the management and appropriate development of two language systems, it makes sense that these special skills of mental management should also apply to aspects of attention, conflict resolution, and cognitive control."
  1. But does bilingualism also bring benefits to other cognitive functions such as memory?
    1. "The answer may depend substantially on the type of memory being investigated."
      1. Working Memory
        “Working memory (the manipulation of small amounts of material held briefly in mind) is generally considered to be either part of, or closely related to, executive processes, so bilingual advantages might be expected with such paradigms.”
        EVIDENCE
        Supports proposed bilingual advantage:
        “Tentatively, it seems to us that a bilingual advantage should be found in working memory, given the previously reviewed evidence suggesting that bilinguals have an advantage in set maintenance (e.g., Colzato et al., 2008) and in related abilities of monitoring (Costa et al., 2009) and updating (Hernández et al., 2010)."
        Bialystok et al. (2004)
        Simon task
        Bilingual advantage in working memory.
        Bailystok, Craik, and Luk (2008a)
        Corsi Block task
        There was a bilingual advantage for for younger adults.
        Feng, Diamond and Bialstok, 2007
        Bilingual advantage for children was found in a test of spatial working memory.
        Feng, 2008
        Bilingual advantage for adults was found in a test of spatial working memory.
        Refutes proposed bilingual advantage:
        Bailystok, Craik, and Luk (2008a)
        Self-ordered pointing task
        No language-group differences were found.
        Corsi Block task
        There was no bilingual advantage for for older adults.
        Feng, 2008
        No bilingual advantage was found in either the Corsi Block task or in the alpha span task for young adults.
        “Whether or not there is a bilingual advantage in working memory may depend on the type of material used and the way in which working memory is tested.”
        “Working memory tasks may not be tapping one fixed cognitive mechanism but rather reflect a family of related functions generally concerned with holding and manipulating material that is in the focus of attention (Cowan, 1999) or simply "held in mind".”
      2. Episodic Memory
        "Performance on episodic memory tasks may again depend on the material in question."
        "The effects of bilingualism on episodic memory are also unclear at present, as only a few studies have been reported."
      3. Semantic Memory
        "Performance on semantic memory tasks (tapping stores of acquired knowledge) is likely to reflect experience with the type of information tested."
        "Given that [...] bilingual vocabulary levels are typically lower than those of comparable monolinguals, we might expect that retrieval of verbal information would be poorer in bilingual participants. [...] Performance on naming tasks and other tasks of lexical retrieval do in fact show this pattern."
        "At present, [...] there is a clear disadvantage for bilinguals in the retrieval of items from semantic memory."
      4. "For both working memory and episodic memory, the evidence is mixed."
Bilingual Memory: The Weak Hypothesis
1. "The weak hypothesis: that language-of-input tagging (whether in one or more memory banks) does occur for bilinguals."
2. Aleta Gulden, José E. Martínez and Juan Clemente Zamora, Bilingual Review / La Revista Bilingüe, Vol. 7, No. 1 (January - April 1980), pp. 15-18
3. "Language crossing can be a factor contributing to mistakes by bilinguals, and this factor is not present in monolinguals. Hence it should be expected that there would be more semantic and grammatical crossings among the bilinguals tested, unless language tagging blocked most of such crossings."
  1. "The tests showed that there were no more crossings in the bilingual group than in the monolingual group."
  2. "In fact there were fewer, although the lesser number was statistically non-significant."
    1. "Since both monolinguals and bilinguals performed equally, [the researchers had] to conclude that the data supports the weak hypothesis."

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