Serial-position effects on a free-recall task in bilinguals

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Psycholinguistics
• Neuroscience of Language

Background:

• Free recall performance in bilinguals is influenced by language proficiency and cognitive factors.
• Serial-position effects, including primacy and recency, are key indicators of memory recall patterns.
• Understanding how working memory interacts with language in bilinguals is crucial for cognitive models.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the mechanisms of free recall in bilinguals' first language (L1) versus second language (L2) using serial-position effects.
• To examine the relationship between working memory capacity and serial-position effects across L1 and L2.
• To determine if linguistic knowledge constrains recall performance differently in L1 and L2.

Main Methods:

• Korean-English bilingual participants completed free-recall tasks in both their L1 and L2.
• Serial-position curves were analyzed to identify primacy, middle, and recency effects.
• An independent working memory measure was administered and correlated with recall performance.

Main Results:

• Stronger pre-recency effects (primacy and middle recall) were observed in L1 compared to L2.
• Recency effects were comparable across both L1 and L2.
• Working memory showed a significant association with pre-recency recall in L1, but not in L2.

Conclusions:

• Linguistic knowledge significantly constrains free recall, particularly in the pre-recency stages of memory retrieval.
• The influence of working memory on recall performance is language-dependent, being more pronounced in the L1.
• These findings highlight distinct cognitive mechanisms underlying memory recall in bilinguals' different languages.