Christina Zhu

Outline

Introduction of topic

Bilingualism & Cognitive Load theory

Past research indications

Current research

Method

Participants

Materials

Procedures

Results

Discussion

1 - Bilingualism Bilinguals are people who are capable of

speaking, writing, and interpreting fluently in two

languages

Many people who moves to another country must learn

the language of that country. (Like me)

New York is a melting pot that holds so many different

ethnic groups, with many bilinguals. What are the basic

advantages?

My interest in this topic

2 - Cognitive Load theory

States that our working memory holds limited capacity.

The memory capacity used depends on the difficulty of

that information. Consider…

Complexity of information:

High-Load task: tasks which are more complex, and

requires more memory capacity, which leaves very little

room for other memory processes

Low-Load task: easier tasks, which requires less memory

capacity, leaving memory with greater capacity

Past research Kaushanskaya and Marian (2009)

They used English-Native Monolinguals and English-

Spanish Bilinguals

Created novel words for both groups to learn

The novel words were given to participants by Auditory

presentations of the non-word phonologies (Hearing)

and Visual presentations of the non-word spellings

(reading) (I.e., TUF, IGUF, EFIT)

Kaushanskaya and Marian (2009) Cont’d

What they found:

Experience of bilinguals with Spanish

facilitated novel-word learning

From this experiment we can conclude that

bilinguals have an advantage in learning and

memorizing new language.

Past Research Findings

What led to my research…

Many past research like base article has

been done on Alphabet based novel

words.

But what about character based

languages?

Current research

addition of character-based language will

produce a problem in memory for only monolinguals, this

is because monolingual individuals will not be able to

manage such high cognitive load task as well as bilinguals

Current research Cont’d

IV: Language abilities of the bilinguals and monolinguals

DV: Amount of words & corresponding definitions

memorized

Participants: Local citizens of Binghamton.

Bilinguals & Monolinguals

Bilinguals:

English-Italian and English-Spanish speakers

Tested for their language ability prior to the experiment

Current research Cont’d

Materials:

Chinese Presentation Matching Survey (CPMS)

Word selection

Current research Cont’d

Procedures:

1) Instructed to pay full attention to the presentations on the

screen & memorize

2) Presentation includes Chinese word & definition

3) Presentation will appear for eight seconds

4) During visual display of stimuli, participants will also hear

the pronunciation of the Chinese word from the loud

speaker (Played twice)

5) Fill out CPMS survey form

6) Debriefed

Results

The results will be analyzed by a paired sample T-test

Proposed Results will show:

Bilinguals had higher portion of correct responses

than monolinguals

Past research supports:

Van Aasche, Duyck, Hartsuiker, and Diependaele

(2009) that bilinguals possess a highly integrated

processing system that reaches across

languages, this means that bilinguals have hold a

functioning system that helps them learn language

regardless of what the language is

Implications

What this means:

Indicates that bilinguals did overcome the high cognitive load memory task, and bilinguals memory for language is better even if the language is character-based

Being bilingual gives the advantages to not only memorize alphabet based languages better, but can also overcome the complexity of character based languages as well