Resumen de Does bilingualism help memory?: Competing effects of verbal ability and executive control
Zofia Wodniecka, Fergus I. M. Craik, Lin Luo, Ellen Bialystok
Two studies are reported that explore the effect of bilingualism on memory performance. Following previous reports of a bilingual advantage in executive control that sometimes shows a greater advantage in older adults, we compared younger and older monolinguals and bilinguals on a memory paradigm that yielded separate measures of familiarity and recollection. As expected, there were no consistent effects in familiarity, but there were age and language differences in recollection, a measure reflecting executive control. Younger adults were superior to older adults on this measure, but there was minimal support for a bilingual advantage in the younger group. Older bilingual adults did show such an advantage, especially on non-verbal tasks. The results provide some initial evidence for the interrelations among processing abilities, types of material, bilingualism, and aging in assessments of memory performance.
