Working memory as a partial mediator of the relationship between multilingualism and foreign language aptitude

ABSTRACT

While the relationship between language experience and foreign language aptitude (FLA) has been studied extensively, little is known about the underlying intermediate link between them. This study investigates whether multilingual learning experience is correlated with FLA and whether working memory (WM) mediates this relationship. A total of 93 accomplished bilingual or trilingual learners aged 18–25 years from Chinese universities participated in this study. Results showed significant differences in the performance of implicit language aptitude (ILA) (measured by LLAMA D) between L2 and L3 learners. Critically, further mediation analysis demonstrated that WM acted as a partial mediator between the multilingualism – ILA association. Taken together, these findings highlight the partial indirect effect of multilingual learning experience on FLA through WM, which contributes to the understanding of the underlying mechanism between language experience and FLA as well as the extent to which WM affects their relationship.

KEYWORDS:

• Language experience
• multilingualism
• foreign language aptitude
• implicit language aptitude
• working memory

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 CET 6: The College English Test 6 (CET 6) is a national English test administered by the Chinese Ministry of Education.

2 The Japanese-Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) is a global test offered by the Japan Foundation and Japan Educational Exchanges and Services in 1984, aiming to evaluate and certify the Japanese proficiency of non-native speakers. According to the standard reference level in JLPT, those who have reached the N1 level can be recognised as proficient Japanese language users.

3 Following previous work (Cox et al., 2019; Granena, 2013; Huang et al., 2020; Rogers et al., 2017), we did not calculate a composite aptitude score in this study due to the multifaceted and differentiated nature of FLA.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant number 71942003]; Shanghai Eastern Scholar Program [Grant number TP2016020]; Shanghai International Studies University Research Projects [Grant numbers 2017114005, 41003621].