Department of Psychology, Ariel University, Ariel, Israel.
Department of Communication Disorders, Ariel University, Ariel, Israel.
Exp Psychol. 2024 Jan;71(1):51-63. doi: 10.1027/1618-3169/a000613.
There is evidence suggesting that bilingual individuals demonstrate an advantage over monolinguals in performing various tasks related to memory and executive functions. The characteristics of this bilingual advantage are not unanimously agreed upon in the literature, and some even doubt it exists. The heterogeneity of the bilingual population may explain this inconsistency. Hence, it is important to identify different subgroups of bilinguals and characterize their cognitive performance. The current study focuses on the production effect, a well-established memory phenomenon, in bilingual young adults differing in their English and Hebrew proficiency levels, and the possible balanced bilingual advantage. The aims of this study are (1) to evaluate the production effect in three groups of bilingual participants: English-dominant bilinguals, Hebrew-dominant bilinguals, and balanced bilinguals, and (2) to examine whether memory advantage depends on varying degrees of bilingualism. One hundred twenty-one bilingual young adults who speak English and Hebrew at different levels participated. All learned lists of familiar words, in English and Hebrew, half by reading aloud and half by silent reading, followed by free recall tests. As expected, a production effect (better memory for aloud words than for silent words) was found for all groups in both languages. Balanced bilinguals remembered more words than did dominant participants, demonstrating a memory advantage in both languages. These findings support the hypothesis that the presence of cognitive advantage in bilingualism depends on the acquisition of a good proficiency level in each of the languages, with direct implications for family language policy and bilingual education.
有证据表明，双语个体在执行与记忆和执行功能相关的各种任务时优于单语个体。双语优势的特点在文献中并未达成一致共识，甚至有人怀疑其存在。双语人群的异质性可能解释了这种不一致性。因此，识别不同的双语亚组并描述他们的认知表现是很重要的。本研究关注双语年轻人在英语和希伯来语熟练程度不同时的产生效应，这是一种成熟的记忆现象，以及可能存在的平衡双语优势。本研究的目的是：（1）在三组双语参与者中评估产生效应：英语主导的双语者、希伯来语主导的双语者和平衡双语者；（2）检验记忆优势是否取决于不同程度的双语能力。121 名说英语和希伯来语的双语年轻人以不同的水平参与了研究。所有参与者都学习了熟悉的英语和希伯来语单词列表，一半通过大声朗读，一半通过默读，然后进行自由回忆测试。正如预期的那样，所有组在两种语言中都发现了产生效应（大声朗读的单词比默读的单词记忆更好）。平衡双语者比主导参与者记住了更多的单词，在两种语言中都表现出了记忆优势。这些发现支持了这样一种假设，即在双语中存在认知优势取决于在每种语言中获得良好的熟练程度，这对家庭语言政策和双语教育具有直接影响。
