TY - JOUR
T1 - Associations between bilingualism and memory generalization during infancy
T2 - Does socioeconomic status matter?
AU - Brito, Natalie H.
AU - Greaves, Ashley
AU - Leon-Santos, Ana
AU - Fifer, William P.
AU - Noble, Kimberly G.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press.
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/3
Y1 - 2021/3
N2 - Past studies have reported memory differences between monolingual and bilingual infants (Brito & Barr, 2012; Singh, Fu, Rahman, Hameed, Sanmugam, Agarwal, Jiang, Chong, Meaney & Rifkin-Graboi, 2015). A common critique within the bilingualism literature is the absence of socioeconomic indicators and/or a lack of socioeconomic diversity among participants. Previous research has demonstrated robust bilingual differences in memory generalization from 6- to 24-months of age. The goal of the current study was to examine if these findings would replicate in a sample of 18-month-old monolingual and bilingual infants from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds (N = 92). Results indicate no differences between language groups on working memory or cued recall, but significant differences for memory generalization, with bilingual infants outperforming monolingual infants regardless of socioeconomic status (SES). These findings replicate and extend results from past studies (Brito & Barr, 2012; Brito, Sebastián-Gallés & Barr, 2015) and suggest possible differential learning patterns dependent on linguistic experience.
AB - Past studies have reported memory differences between monolingual and bilingual infants (Brito & Barr, 2012; Singh, Fu, Rahman, Hameed, Sanmugam, Agarwal, Jiang, Chong, Meaney & Rifkin-Graboi, 2015). A common critique within the bilingualism literature is the absence of socioeconomic indicators and/or a lack of socioeconomic diversity among participants. Previous research has demonstrated robust bilingual differences in memory generalization from 6- to 24-months of age. The goal of the current study was to examine if these findings would replicate in a sample of 18-month-old monolingual and bilingual infants from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds (N = 92). Results indicate no differences between language groups on working memory or cued recall, but significant differences for memory generalization, with bilingual infants outperforming monolingual infants regardless of socioeconomic status (SES). These findings replicate and extend results from past studies (Brito & Barr, 2012; Brito, Sebastián-Gallés & Barr, 2015) and suggest possible differential learning patterns dependent on linguistic experience.
KW - bilingualism
KW - infancy
KW - memory
KW - socioeconomic status
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U2 - 10.1017/S1366728920000334
DO - 10.1017/S1366728920000334
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85085680849
VL - 24
SP - 231
EP - 240
JO - Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
JF - Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
SN - 1366-7289
IS - 2
ER -