Evidence of an advantage in visuo-spatial memory for bilingual compared to monolingual speakers

Kerrigan, L. and Thomas, Michael S.C. and Bright, P. and Filippi, R. (2016) Evidence of an advantage in visuo-spatial memory for bilingual compared to monolingual speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 20 (3), pp. 602-612. ISSN 1366-7289.

Abstract

Previous research has indicated that bilinguals outperform monolinguals in cognitive tasks involving spatial working memory. The present study examines evidence for this claim using a different and arguably more ecologically valid method (the change blindness task). Bilingual and monolingual participants were presented with two versions of the same scenes and required to press a key as soon as they identified the alteration. They also completed the word and alpha span tasks, and the Corsi blocks task. The results in the change blindness task, controlled for group differences in non-verbal reasoning, indicated that bilinguals were faster and more accurate than monolinguals at detecting visual changes. Similar group differences were found on the Corsi block task. Unlike previous findings, no group differences were found on the verbal memory tasks. The results are discussed with reference to mechanisms of cognitive control as a locus of transfer between bilingualism and spatial working memory tasks.

Metadata

Statistics

DownloadsShow export options

Export as XMLJSONCSV

Activity Overview

6 month trend

1Download

6 month trend

542Hits

Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

Archive Staff Only (login required)

Edit/View Item