1. Working-memory: is there a bilingual advantage?
Zehra ONGUN & Michael DALLER
(Baal Vocabulary-SIG ,University of Reading, 2017)
Aims
Results 1
Results 2
The present study investigates whether a bilingual advantage in working-memory can be identified with the established digit working memory sub-tests of the WISC-V (The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children; Wechsler, 2014).
Table 1. Short memory test scores of bilingual and Turkish monolingual groups
Table 2. Short memory test scores of bilingual and English monolingual groups
Working memory tests
group N
Mean
Std. Deviation
Short memory
forward
bilingual
100
8.08
1.739
Turkish mono 24
7.75
1.260
Short-memory
backward
7.31
1.733
6.96
1.083
Working memory tests
group N
Mean
Std. Deviation
Short memory
forward
bilingual
100
8.08
1.739
English mono 25
7.48
1.122
backward
7.31
1.733
6.56
.870
Method
Results 3
Participants
100 Turkish-English sequential bilingual children living in the UK (between 7 and 11 age groups)
two monolingual age-matched peer groups (n =24/ 25)
Measures
Forward and backward digit working memory sub-tests of the WISC-V (The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children; Wechsler, 2014)
Bilingual Dominance Scale for the parents (Dunn and Fox-Tree, 2009)
Procedure
Whole group comparison : the bilingual group and two monolingual groups
Within bilingual group comparison: (More Turkish dominant, and Low Turkish dominant) and the two monolingual groups
Blue: forward
Green: backward
blue: forward
green: backward
Figure 1. Whole group comparison for the forward and backward short memory test scores
Figure 2: Comparison between two bilingual sub-groups and two monolingual groups for short memory test scores
However, the picture is different when the bilingual group is split into two sub-groups, one with more L1 dominant parents and one with low L1 dominant parents. There is a significant difference between the four groups overall (Span-forward-One-way ANOVA, F (3,145) = , p < .001, Span-backward- One-way ANOVA, F (3,145) = , p = .001). However, a multiple comparison (post-hoc Tukey) reveals that the only significant difference between the sub-group is between the group of more Turkish dominant parents and the other 3 groups (p < . 01 for al comparisons), but there is no difference between the low Turkish dominant group and the two monolingual groups.
There is no significant difference for the whole group comparison for the working memory tests (both forward and backward), (Span-forward-One-way ANOVA, F (2,146) = 1.613, p < .203, Span-backward- One-way ANOVA, F (2,146) = 2.572, p = .080).
Conclusion
The results of our study show that there is no bilingual advantage per se, which might be an explanation for the inconsistence of previous results. However, a more fine-grained picture can be drawn when the parental support for L1 and as a result differences in L1 experiences are taken into account.
Parents with a higher dominance for Turkish have children with higher short working memory scores in both forward and backward tests than parents with a lower dominance for Turkish.
Support for L1 seems to have a positive effect on working memory in sequential bilinguals.
Dunn, A. L., &Fox-Tree (2009). A quick, gradient Bilingual Dominance Scale. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12(3),
Wechsler, D. (2014). Wechsler Intelligence scale for children- fifth edition technical and interpretive manual. San Antonio, TX, NCS Pearson. .
References