A multilingual advantage in the components of working memory

Abstract

This study compared working memory ability in multilingual young adults and their monolingual peers on four components of working memory (verbal and visuospatial storage, verbal and visuospatial processing). The sample comprised 39 monolingual English speakers, and 39 multilinguals, who spoke an African language as their first and third languages, and English as their second language, all with high levels of proficiency. The multilingual young adults came from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds and possessed smaller English vocabularies than the monolinguals, features which make this group an under-researched population. Both when SES and verbal ability were and were not statistically controlled, there was evidence of a multilingual advantage in all of the working memory components, which was most pronounced in visuospatial processing. These findings support evidence from bilinguals showing cognitive advantages beyond inhibitory control, and suggest that multilingualism may influence the executive control system generally.

Benefits of foreign language learning and bilingualism: An analysis of published empirical research 2012–2019

“…Among the 72 studies in the cognitive abilities and benefits theme, eight studies addressed WM. Some of these studies investigated the impact of early L2 acquisition on WM (Marini, Eliseeva, & Fabbro, 2019), a multilingual advantage in the components of WM (Cockcroft, Wigdorowitz, & Liversage, 2019), WM and its effect on under-researched populations (Blom, Küntay, Messer, Verhagen, & Leseman, 2014), influences of task demands on WM (Macnamara & Conway, 2014), and a bilingual advantage for episodic memory on older adults (Schroeder & Marian, 2012). Drawing from the findings of these studies, bilinguals displayed an advantage on WM tasks dependent on language experience, specifically if such experience began at an early age, due to the fact that WM usually is not totally developed until the age of 6, and continues to develop throughout middle childhood (Marini et al, 2019).…”

Working memory and psychological resilience in South African emerging adults

“…The Automated Working Memory Assessment (AWMA) has sound psychometric properties for U.K. youth (Alloway, 2007), appears valid for SA youth (Cockcroft et al., 2019), is culturally fair, and not influenced by socioeconomic status (Cockcroft et al., 2016).…”

A Review on the Relationship between Bilingualism and Working Memory

“…Having observed the discrepancy in the existing body of research on the impact of bilingualism on cognitive function, other variables that may have contributed to the different results have been identified and investigated in several studies (e.g., Adesope et al, 2010;Cockcroft, Wigdorowitz, & Liversage, 2019;Yang & Yang, 2017). As pointed out by Dong and Li (2015), a variety of factors, including "the bilingual individual's age, age of acquisition, language proficien-cy, frequency of language use, and difficulty of the experimental task" (p. 1) were very likely to influence the presence or absence of bilingual advantages in previous literature.…”

“…Working memory (WM), which involves a number of underlying cognitive abilities, is arguably considered as one of the most important components of the cognitive functions (Cockcroft et al, 2019;Dong & Li, 2015;Morales, Calvo, & Bialystok, 2013). However, research on the relationship between working memory and bilingualism is generally very few (Adesope et al, 2010;Dong & Li, 2015;Morrison, Kamal, & Taler, 2019).…”

“…To probe into this seemingly controversial issue, some studies have taken a closer look at the components of working memory, including verbal and visuospatial storage, as well as verbal and visuospatial processing (Cockcroft et al, 2019;Dong & Li, 2015;Paap, Johnson, & Sawi, 2014). Findings in this line of research suggest that the impact of bilingualism on each component of working memory may not be the same, or can sometimes be contradictory.…”