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

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-08-30, 14:14 authored by Lucy Kerrigan, Michael S. C. Thomas, Peter Bright, Roberto Filippi
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.

History

Refereed

  • Yes

Volume

20

Issue number

3

Page range

602-612

Publication title

Bilingualism: Language and Cognition

ISSN

1469-1841

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

File version

  • Accepted version

Language

  • eng

Legacy posted date

2016-03-17

Legacy creation date

2021-01-25

Legacy Faculty/School/Department

ARCHIVED Faculty of Science & Technology (until September 2018)

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