Do bilinguals have an advantage in prospective memory?

ABSTRACT

It is well established that bilinguals outperform monolinguals on executive function tasks. However, the effects of bilingualism on prospective memory (PM), which also requires executive functions, have not been investigated vastly. This study aimed to compare bi and monolingual participants’ PM performance in focal and non-focal PM tasks. Forty-eight Turkish-English bilinguals and forty-eight Turkish monolinguals, between the ages of 18–30, were instructed to remember responding to rarely appearing PM cues while engaged in an ongoing task. In the focal PM task, the ongoing task facilitated the processing of the PM cue, whereas the non-focal PM task impeded. The results showed no direct evidence for a bilingual advantage in PM. Moreover, the results showed a reversed effect of PM cue's focality on the ongoing task performance. These findings raise skepticism about the literature's prevalent findings and theoretical explanations. Alternative interpretations are discussed within bilingual advantage and PM theories research areas.

KEYWORDS:

• Bilingualism
• prospective memory
• focality
• executive functions

Acknowledgements

We thank our colleague Mehmet Can Sevinçli from Hitit University, Çorum who provided insight and expertise that greatly assisted the mediation analyses. We also thank to International Balkan University and Hacettepe University students Ayşe Nur Kaya, Büşra Sümeyra Akkalaycı, Şevval Arpacı, Püren Gürkan, Eliz Cantaş and Zeliha Peksoy, for their helps in data collection procedures.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

This is a submission for a Stage 2 Registered Report. The data is available in a public resipatory. https://osf.io/5ghxk/?view_only=a1c7d61c2586440f8698d5d84411687b.

Notes

1 The participants in the bilingual group were chosen among the Turkish students living in North Macedonia, where they attend a university in which the teaching language is English. These bilinguals use their native language only with Turkish speakers and English only with English speakers. They usually find their selves in situations where both Turkish and English speakers are present. In these situations, they must pay attention to using an appropriate language with different speakers because English speakers usually cannot speak Turkish; Turkish speakers, however, do not prefer using the English language with Turkish addressees. For these reasons, the language usage context of Turkish-English bilinguals living in North Macedonia is very consistent with the dual-language context defined by Green and Abutalebi (2013).