Memory for language and modality in bilinguals: Dependencies and frequency effects

The present study investigated how hierarchically related word features, such as language and modality, are encoded in episodic memory. Spanish-English bilingual participants (N = 96) studied a randomly intermixed sequence of English and Spanish words presented visually or auditorily. Picture cues were used to test memory for the language and modality of the original presentation. Bilinguals remembered language more accurately than modality. Memory for both features was more accurate for low-frequency than high-frequency words. However, language proficiency did not correlate with performance. Memory for language and modality were associated at the item level, with a stronger association for low- than high-frequency words. However, modality discrimination was above chance even when language responses were incorrect, showing that access to modality information in episodic memory does not require access to language information. Memory traces for these two features are separately linked to word-encoding episodes, but both depend on item-encoding strength.