ABSTRACT

Due to their experience of managing two languages, it has been suggested that bilinguals could receive more practice in the domain of working memory (WM) leading to a WM bilingual advantage. Although some studies have shown that bilinguals can outperform monolinguals in WM tasks, the studies investigating WM capacity in bilinguals provide inconsistent findings regarding the existence of a bilingual advantage. We therefore conducted a meta-analysis on the association between bilingualism and WM capacity. Data from 116 studies (involving 177 pairs of participants and 444 effect sizes) were extracted. Based on previous findings, we examined age, characteristics of the WM tasks –i.e. complexity (simple span vs transformation vs complex span tasks) and domain (verbal vs nonverbal) – age of first exposure to L2, and L2 proficiency as potential moderating variables. Results indicated a small bilingual advantage in WM (g = .12, p = .054), which was moderated by the language used in the verbal WM task. The bilingual advantage was stronger when the verbal WM task was performed in L2 compared to L1. Thus, the bilingual experience is associated with slightly higher WM capacity. Nevertheless, future studies would benefit from greater consideration of individual differences within groups of bilingual individuals.

摘要

由于他们管理两种语言的经验，有人建议双语者可以在工作记忆 (WM) 领域接受更多练习，从而获得 WM 双语优势。尽管一些研究表明双语者在 WM 任务中的表现优于单语者，但调查双语者 WM 能力的研究在双语优势的存在方面提供了不一致的发现。因此，我们对双语和 WM 能力之间的关联进行了荟萃分析。提取了来自 116 项研究（涉及 177 对参与者和 444 个效应量）的数据。根据之前的发现，我们检查了 WM 任务的年龄、特征——即复杂性（简单跨度与转换与复杂跨度任务）和领域（语言与非语言）——第一次接触 L2 的年龄和 L2 熟练程度作为潜在的调节变量。结果表明，WM 中的双语优势较小（g  = .12，p  = .054），这受到语言 WM 任务中使用的语言的调节。与 L1 相比，在 L2 中执行语言 WM 任务时，双语优势更强。因此，双语体验与稍高的 WM 容量相关。然而，未来的研究将受益于更多地考虑双语个体群体内的个体差异。