page_title: Bilingual memory
section_title: Bilingual working memory
hierarchical_section_title: Bilingual memory / Bilingual working memory
caption_attribution_description: English: Baddeley Working Memory Diagram
context_page_description: Bilingualism is the regular use of two fluent languages, and bilinguals are those individuals who need and use two languages in their everyday lives. A person's bilingual memories are heavily dependent on the person's fluency, the age the second language was acquired, and high language proficiency to both languages. High proficiency provides mental flexibility across all domains of thought and forces them to adopt strategies that accelerate cognitive development. People who are bilingual integrate and organize the information of two languages, which creates advantages in terms of many cognitive abilities, such as intelligence, creativity, analogical reasoning, classification skills, problem solving, learning strategies, and thinking flexibility.
context_section_description: Working memory is an active part of the memory system that temporarily stores and processes information during mental operations. Highly related are the concepts of attention and executive control. A major function of the working memory system is the retention and processing of verbal information. Baddeley's model of working memory suggests the phonological loop, a slave system that is responsible for the rehearsal of verbal information and has been implicated in language acquisition.
  Measures of verbal working memory are predictive of proficiency in a second language and working memory capacity is strongly correlated with first and second language abilities. Despite these correlations, research into the effects of bilingualism on working memory have been largely inconclusive. Bilingual performance on working memory tasks can be affected by language dominance, language proficiency, and the nature of the task, variables which can be difficult to control and assess. However, most recent research suggests that there are no differences between monolingual and bilingual individuals in regards to working memory performance, although more research is still required to make any conclusive claims. The evidence suggests that working memory performance has a stronger relationship with general linguistic proficiency than it does with the acquisition of a second language. It has also been observed that there are no significant cross-language differences within bilinguals, providing further support for the hypothesis that working memory is not language specific. Bilingual speakers are, however, more accurate in assessing their metalinguistic reading and working memory abilities compared to monolingual speakers.
caption: Alan Baddeley's Model of Working Memory
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