Bilingual Episodic Memory: How Speaking Two Languages Influences Remembering

Abstract

A remarkable feat of human memory is the ability to vividly remember details from many past experiences ranging from meaningful, distant memories, such as a family member’s wedding over a decade ago, to mundane, recent memories, like dinner last night.

What is memory if not the language of feeling, a dictionary of faces and days and smells which repeat themselves like the verbs and adjectives in a speech, sneaking in behind the thing itself, into the pure present…—Julio Cortázar

Appendices

List of Key Words and Concepts

Alzheimer’s disease, Amnesia, Autobiographical memory, Bilingualism, Context-dependent memory, Cross-linguistic interactions, Culture, Dual-coding theory, Encoding, Encoding specificity, Episodic memory, Executive control, Frontal lobes, Grammar, Hippocampus, Language-dependent memory, Lexical access, Linguistic relativity hypothesis, Medial temporal lobes, Retrieval, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Second language acquisition, Semantic memory, Thinking-for-speaking hypothesis, Vocabulary

Thought Questions

• 1. To what extent do you think the effects of bilingualism on episodic memory extend to bidialectals? (Bidialectals are people who speak two dialects of the same language, such as African-American Vernacular English and Standard American English.) Would bidialectals exhibit language-dependent memory? Why or why not? Would bidialectals encode and recall experiences differently when using one dialect versus the other? Why or why not?

• 2. How do you think episodic memory changes when bilinguals acquire a third language and become trilingual? Specifically, would deficits in verbal memory and enhancements in nonverbal memory be larger in trilinguals as compared with bilinguals? Why or why not?

• 3. What effects do you think age of acquisition of the second language has on bilingual episodic memory? We discussed how the linguistic structure of a language can affect the way a bilingual encodes an event. For example, we mentioned that Indonesian speakers frequently omit tense and that Indonesian bilinguals may exhibit worse memory for the temporal aspects of an event when they are in an Indonesian context (even when the event is nonverbal). To what extent do you think the effects of language structure on memory encoding depend on when the language was acquired? How might the effects be different if the language was learned in childhood versus adolescence versus adulthood?

• 4. Bilinguals often encode an event in one language and then retrieve it in their other language. How do you think this affects subsequent retrieval? Is this memory more likely to come to mind when the language of encoding is being used, when the language of retrieval is being used, or in a mixed environment when both languages are being used? Moreover, can retrieving the memory in a different language (i.e., not the language of encoding) hurt memory by leading the bilingual to recall the memory less faithfully and thereby distorting the actual event? Can retrieving memory in a different language also help memory by providing a new retrieval route through a second language?

• 5. There are reports of bilingual aphasics who lose ability in one of their languages while maintaining ability in their other language. Based on our discussion of language-dependent memory, to what extent do you think these aphasics will have difficulty remembering experiences that were encoded in the language they seem to have lost? If you think they will have episodic memory difficulties, can you think of ways that would help these patients recover their memories?

• 6. We discussed several neural correlates of episodic memory (e.g., the hippocampus and the frontal lobes). However, no study to date has examined the neural correlates of bilingual episodic memory. For some of the bilingual effects we discussed (i.e., language-dependent memory and potentially enhanced visual-spatial memory in bilinguals), how do you think these effects would manifest at the neural level?

Applied Issues in Learning and Memory in the Acquisition of an L2 and Vocabulary Learning

Although episodic memory seems to relate only tenuously to second language acquisition , this connection may be stronger than it appears, since new vocabulary items may initially be stored as an episodic memory (as there is a time and place associated with learning the new words). Subsequently, this knowledge can be decontextualized from its initial learning context, making it solely a semantic memory. Because second language acquisition may start off as episodic in nature, some of our discussions in the chapter may be applied to instructional techniques for learning.

• 1. Based on our coverage of context-dependent memory, one might expect that vocabulary words learned in the classroom would be remembered well in the classroom, but perhaps not as well outside of the classroom. As the point of school instruction is to transfer knowledge outside of the classroom, it is most likely beneficial to simulate nonacademic interactions inside the classroom or even take field trips to practice in a nonacademic setting.

• 2. A potential way to successfully transfer vocabulary knowledge from a contextualized episodic memory to a decontextualized semantic memory is to present material in many different contexts. For example, students may benefit if to-be-learned words are presented in different sentence contexts, in different types of exercises, in different classrooms, and in different modalities.

• 3. For bilinguals learning a third language, a potentially effective way to convert a newly learned word from an episodic memory into a context-free semantic memory is to gain exposure to the word in the contexts of both of their already-known languages, not just in one language. Moreover, linking old words to new words (e.g., teaching the Spanish word for water “agua” by linking water-agua) might not be as effective for bilinguals as it is for monolinguals since bilinguals can have difficulty retrieving lexical information in an already-known language. Instead, it might help to link the new word with nonlexical information like images and environmental sounds.

Suggested Research Projects for Students

• 1. In this project, you will attempt to replicate the language-dependent memory effect. First, write down a list of 20 high-frequency concrete English nouns that are not cognates in your other language but that have a translational equivalent. Then, randomly choose half of these words and translate them into your other language. Take the list of ten English words and ten non-English words and put them in a random order. Next, find a friend or classmate who knows both languages and read the list of 20 words to them. Then, after a 5-minute delay, have them write down all the words they remember hearing and have them do so in English. Did they recall more English words than non-English words? If so, you found evidence for language-dependent memory. If not, think of reasons why and consider how this study differed from the studies that were discussed in the chapter.

• 2. For the second project, you will explore whether memories are recalled differently when bilinguals are using one language versus the other. Interview a bilingual who speaks one language associated with an individualistic culture and another language associated with a collectivist culture (See Hofstede 1980, 2001 for discussions of the individualistic-collectivist distinction) . Think of five cue words that elicit memories (such as birthday, doctor, and cat; see Marian and Kaushanskaya 2004 for more cue words). Provide the five cue words in one language and, for each word, have them report the first memory that comes to mind using that same language. Then, present the five cue words in the other language and have them describe a different memory in that language. Record their responses and count the number of first-person singular pronouns and first-person plural pronouns. Did the bilingual use more first-person singular pronouns when recalling experiences in the individualistic language and more first-person plural pronouns when recalling experiences in the collectivist language? Did you notice any other differences between the memories reported in one language versus the memories reported in the other language?