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Associations between bilingualism and memory generalization during infancy: Does socioeconomic status matter?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2020

Natalie H. Brito Open the ORCID record for Natalie H. Brito [Opens in a new window] ,
Ashley Greaves ,
Ana Leon-Santos ,
William P. Fifer  and
Kimberly G. Noble
Natalie H. Brito*
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, 10003
Ashley Greaves
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, 10003
Ana Leon-Santos
Affiliation:
Department of Biobehavioral Sciences, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10027
William P. Fifer
Affiliation:
Department of Pediatrics, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY10032 Division of Developmental Neuroscience, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY10032
Kimberly G. Noble
Affiliation:
Department of Biobehavioral Sciences, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10027
*
Address for correspondence: Natalie Hiromi Brito, E-mail: natalie.brito@nyu.edu
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Abstract

Past studies have reported memory differences between monolingual and bilingual infants (Brito & Barr, 2012; Singh, Fu, Rahman, Hameed, Sanmugam, Agarwal, Jiang, Chong, Meaney & Rifkin-Graboi, 2015). A common critique within the bilingualism literature is the absence of socioeconomic indicators and/or a lack of socioeconomic diversity among participants. Previous research has demonstrated robust bilingual differences in memory generalization from 6- to 24-months of age. The goal of the current study was to examine if these findings would replicate in a sample of 18-month-old monolingual and bilingual infants from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds (N = 92). Results indicate no differences between language groups on working memory or cued recall, but significant differences for memory generalization, with bilingual infants outperforming monolingual infants regardless of socioeconomic status (SES). These findings replicate and extend results from past studies (Brito & Barr, 2012; Brito, Sebastián-Gallés & Barr, 2015) and suggest possible differential learning patterns dependent on linguistic experience.

Keywords

bilingualismsocioeconomic statusmemoryinfancy
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , March 2021 , pp. 231 - 240
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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