Bilingual Advantage for Episodic Memory - Research Paper Example

Bilingual Advantage for Episodic Memory Task Specific Aims The hypothesis is that older adults that are bilingual are able to maintain episodic memory than monolingual adults. This research aims to show that people who can speak two languages are able to have a better executive functioning and episodic memory than monolinguists. There are specific tests that are done in this research to show that bilinguists have better episodic memory than their monolinguist counterparts. Therefore, the objective of his research is to show the benefit that bilinguists have over monolinguists in relation to the control of episodic memory. In addition, the research will look at the difference amongst a select group of bilinguist. The research will look at the difference in episodic memory between the people who learned a second language early in life, and those who learned it late in life. For that reason, this research aims to study the advantage bilinguist have in episodic memory compared to monolinguists. Bilinguists also differ depending on the time that they learned the second language. This research proposes that bilinguists who learned a second language earlier in life a have an advantage of episodic memory than bilinguist that learned a second language later in life. Background and Significance When one ages, he or she begins to have problems with the cognitive process such as the episodic memory (Schroeder & Mirian, 2012). These problems with the episodic memory normally lead to negative effects that range from one’s personal and social life. It is necessary to note that these problems with episodic memory are significant in one’s life as he or she ages. One can forget vital things in his or her personal life or the workplace, and this may cause major setbacks. For this reason, it is important to research the factors that cause problems with the episodic memory. This study has the objective of looking at how bilingualism is important to adults and how it helps maintain episodic memory. Episodic memory is a term that is used to refer to one’s ability to recall his or her personal experience. This ability to recall ranges from remembering events that happened years ago to recent events. Ageing is a major reason that causes the decline in episodic memory that makes many old people forget events that have happened in their lives (Schroeder & Mirian, 2012). This means that there is a problem for one to remember things as an adult gets older. An example of this fact can be shown by the deficit to remember words that an old adult has been given. He or she finds it difficult to remember words that they have just handled few moments ago. Part of the brain in the medial temporal lobe is responsible for executive functions one of which is to execute episodic memory. The process of memorizing an event involves encoding and retrieval that is done in the frontal lobes (Marian & Kaushanksaya, 2007). These frontal lobes get damaged as one increases in age that brings a problem in the process of encoding and retrieval. This means that old people have poor episodic memory because they have damaged their frontal lobes. According to Baudouin et al (2009), the performance in episodic memory tasks decreases as an adult increases with age. According to studies in this literature, old age causes a problem with executive functioning, which leads to reduced episodic memory. Older adults who have an extensive experience in bilingual knowledge have a better executive functioning than those who only have monolingual knowledge (Schroeder & Mirian, 2012). This reflects in the way bilingual adults have better control of episodic memory compared to their monolingual peers (Bialystock et al, 2004). The reason for this is that the bilinguals have the character of adopting a memory in two different languages. Bilinguists are able to memorize events easier than monolinguists since bilinguists can suppress interference from one language when using the other language. It is true to say that bilingual people are able to maintain executive functioning in old age. Therefore, bilingual adults have a good executive functioning that enables them to control their episodic memory. However, there is a study that assessed free recall of words which disputes this claim by saying that bilingual adults recall fewer words than their monolinguist peers (Fernandes et al, 2007). The effect of lexical processing was a factor stated to be a reason behind the failure of bilinguists to recall certain words. This problem that bilinguists have with the lexical process causes them to have slower response rates and a small vocabulary (Bialystock et al, 2007). Participants in the episodic memory process show that monolinguists have an advantage over the bilinguists due to the lexical process. In order to remove the lexical process entirely from the study, the participants can be shown random pictures without the expectation to recall them. This task involves showing the participants, who are older adults random pictures, and then surprisingly asking them to recall the photos that they have been shown. The lexical process was reduced in the older participants making them remember the pictures freely. The bilinguals are expected to have an advantage of remembering things to the monolinguals when the lexical process is reduced. The participants could use synonyms to describe the pictures that they were shown earlier. Use of pictures was the first step to determine if bilinguals have an advantage over their monolingual peers. Their ability to remember the actual event was measured on the ability to recall the actual content in a free recall process. The second task is to use the Simon task to asses the ability of the executive functioning. This task had the aim to find out the difference between monolingual and Bilingual people in their ability to capture the important things in noisy surroundings. The process to measure the Simon Task was used to identify that old bilingual individuals had better episodic memory than older monolingual individuals. The purpose is to determine if executive functioning determined the episodic memory of an individual. Research Methods and Design The study uses 36 participants where there are 18 bilinguals and 18 monolinguals. The eighteen monolinguals consist of seven males and eleven females. On the other hand, the bilinguals consisted of eight females and ten males. The bilinguals knew English plus another language such as French, Polish, Romanian, Spanish, Yiddish, and Bengali. The bilinguals in this study had English as the second acquired language save for a single participant who learned two languages from birth. Three participants knew the second language by the age of five, 5 of the participants learned the second language after the age of five, but before the age of thirteen., ten participants had learned the second language after the age of thirteen. These ranges in the periods the bilinguals learned their second language was useful in determining how the period one learns the second language affects episodic memory. The participants had a similar trait that none of them used the second language constantly. Both the monolingual and bilingual participants were similar. They passed several tests to determine that none of them had dementia. Approach This research had the aim to prove that bilinguals have an episodic memory advantage over the monolinguals. The study uses older adults testing their ability to recall pictures based on their knowledge of languages. Bilingual adults are expected to have better episodic memory and recall more pictures than their monolingual counterparts. In the consideration of arousal and valence, bilinguals are expected to have a better ability to recall pictures than the monolinguals. Early knowledge of a second language is expected to boost the ability of a bilingual to have a good episodic memory. In this case, elderly people of the same age are tested to prove this expected result. The age at which they learned the second language is measured and measures against their abilities in episodic memory. Earlier knowledge of a second knowledge is expected to champion in episodic memory because of early knowledge on how to memorize events. This is since a person who learns a concept early in life is able to understand it better than someone who learns a concept later in life. Executive functioning is a factor that is considered to heavily determine the episodic memory. Old people who know more than one language can process and remember information better their monolinguistic peers. According to Ullman (2001), the bilinguals depend on the medial temporal lobe to process grammatical rules and lexical items. This excessive reliance enhances the functioning of the medial temporal lobe, which in turn makes the person recall events easily. Future studies should determine how the differences in bilinguals and monolinguals are determined by medial temporal lobe and the executive functioning system. Research by Marian and Fausey (2006) supports this hypothesis that adult bilinguals have better episodic memory than their monolinguist peers. It is possible for people to counter the loss of memory that is caused by old age by becoming bilingual. References Baudouin, A., et al. (2009). Executive functioning and processing speed in age-related differences in memory: Contribution of a coding task. Brain and Cognition, 71, 240-245. Bialystok, E., et al. (2004). Bilingualism, aging, and cognitive control: Evidence from the Simon task. Psychology and Aging, 19, 290-303. Bialystok, E., et al. (2007). Bilingualism as a protection against the onset of symptoms of dementia. Neuropsychologia, 45, 459-464. Fernandes, M. A., et al. (2007). Effects of bilingualism, aging, and semantic relatedness on memory under divided attention. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61, 128-141. Schroeder, S., R. & Marian, V. (2012). A bilingual advantage for episodic memory in older adults. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 24 (5), 591-601. Read More