Effects of bilingualism on declarative and procedural memory

Babcock, L. 1 , Dagort Billig, J. 2 , Finger, I. 2 & Ullman, M. T. 1

1 Georgetown University
2 Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul

Previous studies have generally shown bilingual advantages in executive functioning over the lifespan. However, fewer studies have examined the effects of bilingual experience on other cognitive domains, including declarative and procedural memory, even though they seem to play an important role in both first and second language (Ullman, 2001; 2005). The present ongoing study aims to fill this gap by testing middle-aged and elderly Brazilian monolingual speakers of Portuguese and Brazilian bilingual speakers of Hunsrückisch (a German dialect) and Portuguese. Participants completed four tasks focused on non-linguistic and linguistic aspects of declarative and procedural memory: a recognition memory task and a word learning task for declarative memory, and the Alternating Serial Reaction Time task (Howard et al., 1997) and an artificial grammar learning task for procedural memory. Based on the involvement of both declarative and procedural memory in language, we expect group differences in all tasks, in particular a bilingual advantage due to the greater development of the two memory systems in bilinguals as a result of their language experience.