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. 2017 Jul 18;7(7):86.
doi: 10.3390/brainsci7070086.

Bilinguals' Working Memory (WM) Advantage and Their Dual Language Practices

Eunju Yang  1
Affiliations

Bilinguals' Working Memory (WM) Advantage and Their Dual Language Practices

Eunju Yang. Brain Sci. .

Abstract

The present study investigates a possible working memory (WM) difference between monolingual and bilingual groups and explores the relationship between their WM advantage and language practices. A mixed methods design was employed for the study. To measure participants' WM, auditory and visual digit span tasks were conducted on the different language groups: 20 Korean near-monolinguals, and 40 Korean-English bilinguals with two different levels of second language (L2) proficiency. Bilinguals' daily language practices were explored through semi-structured interviews with eight bilinguals. The convergence of the findings from both tests and interview data suggests that knowing two languages does not guarantee bilingual WM advantages over monolinguals, but the advantage might be linked to bilinguals' unique L2 use environment where they need to hold incoming L2 information while decoding it.

Keywords: bilinguals; language practices; mixed methods; working memory.

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Conflict of interest statement

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Group mean comparisons in TE-ML scores. (a) Visual forward two-error maximum length of three language groups; (b) Visual backward two-error maximum length of three language groups; (c) Auditory forward two-error maximum length of three language groups; (d) Auditory backward two-error maximum length of three language groups.
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