Actions speak louder than words: Differences in memory flexibility between monolingual and bilingual 18‐month‐olds

Abstract

Bilingual infants from 6‐ to 24‐months of age are more likely to generalize, flexibly reproducing actions on novel objects significantly more often than age‐matched monolingual infants are. In the current study, we examine whether the addition of novel verbal labels enhances memory generalization in a perceptually complex imitation task. We hypothesized that labels would provide an additional retrieval cue and aid memory generalization for bilingual infants. Specifically, we hypothesized that bilinguals might be more likely than monolinguals to map multiple perceptual features onto a novel label and therefore show enhanced generalization. Eighty‐seven 18‐month‐old monolingual and bilingual infants were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions or a baseline control condition. In the experimental conditions, either no label or a novel label was added during demonstration and again at the beginning of the test session. After a 24‐hr delay, infants were tested with the same stimulus set to test cued recall and with a perceptually different but functionally equivalent stimulus set to test memory generalization. Bilinguals performed significantly above baseline on both cued recall and memory generalization in both experimental conditions, whereas monolinguals performed significantly above baseline only on cued recall in both experimental conditions. These findings show a difference between monolinguals and bilinguals in memory generalization and suggest that generalization differences between groups may arise from visual perceptual processing rather than linguistic processing. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/yXB4pM3fF2k

Patterns of mutual exclusivity and retention: A study of monolingual and bilingual 2‐year‐olds

“…In deferred imitation tasks, during flexibility trials, an experimenter demonstrates target actions on one set of items, but at test, infants are presented with perceptually different but functionally equivalent items. Brito and colleagues (2014) found 24-month-olds monolinguals relied on labels, but bilinguals did not (see Barr et al 2020 for similar results in 18 month-olds). Taken together, memory flexibility findings suggest that bilinguals may rely more on visual perceptual features and use labels differently than monolinguals.…”

“…Taken together, memory flexibility findings suggest that bilinguals may rely more on visual perceptual features and use labels differently than monolinguals. Critically, relying on perceptual features for disambiguation does not typically support word retention in younger 18-month-old children (Kucker et al, 2018) but does facilitate memory flexibility in 18-and 24-months-olds (Barr et al, 2020;Brito et al, 2014). However, because the field has relied on cross-sectional approaches, the developmental trajectory of both mutual exclusivity and memory flexibility is unknown.…”

“…), in which language, and for how many hours per day, using the Language Exposure Assessment Tool (LEAT, DeAnda et al, 2016). Following previous studies (Barr et al, 2020;Brito & Barr, 2012;Brito et al, 2014Brito et al, , 2015, if a child was exposed to a second language for at least 20% of the time since birth, they were classified as "bilingual." Otherwise, they were labeled "monolingual."…”

Measures of bilingual cognition – from infancy to adolescence

“…Working memory was assessed in two experiments using the Spin the Pots and Hide the Pots tasks Brito et al, 2020).…”

“…Memory was measured in seven experiments within six articles (Barr, Rusnak, Brito, & Nugent, 2020;Brito et al, 2020;Brito & Barr, 2012;Brito et al, 2015). All of these experiments used a Deferred Imitation Memory Generalization (DIMG) task in order to test infants' memory flexibility (the ability to generalize a previously learned response from one context to a novel, but similar one) and cued recall.…”