Bilingual Representational Systems in Free Recall

Abstract

40 undergraduates equally proficient in English and Yoruba were classified as “low” or “high” on separation of bilingual representational systems depending on the extent to which they were able to provide correct Yoruba translations to responses they had earlier given on a 10-item word-association test in English. The two groups of subjects participated in a task involving the repeated learning and recall of a bilingual list of translated equivalent words. Three trials were given. It was predicted that the low group who provided more translations would benefit more on this task than the high group who provided comparatively fewer translations. The low group recalled more translated equivalent words than the high group on Trials 2 and 3. It was concluded that the two groups of subjects are differentially sensitive to the semantic equivalence between the translated equivalent words and must possess somewhat different representations of the words in memory.