When Second Beats First: Worse Memory Monitoring in Bilinguals’ Native Language

Indianapolis, IN

Past research indicates that bilinguals may differ in their metacognition. Accuracy of language self-assessments is variable, but self-evaluations of memory have not been investigated in bilingual populations. The current study assessed the accuracy of bilinguals’ memory self-perceptions in Spanish and in English to determine whether their metamemory is more accurate in their primary or their secondary language. We hypothesized that native Spanish speakers would be more accurate in judging their memory for English than Spanish information. Sixteen Spanish (primary) and English (secondary) bilingual speakers participated in the study. Participants studied 36 paired-associates (12 Spanish, 12 English, and 12 picture pairs) and later took a memory test in which they were asked to recognize them. At various points, participants estimated how well they would perform on the upcoming memory test. Also, after studying each pair, participants offered a judgement of learning (JOL) as a confidence rating. Consistent with our hypothesis, bilingual speakers’ English JOLs were the most accurate judgements followed by picture and Spanish JOLs. Similarly, the correlations between performance predictions made subsequent to studying the items and actual memory scores showed the same pattern with English predictions being the best indicator of later memory, followed by Picture and Spanish predictions. Together, our results indicate that bilingual Spanish speakers more accurately evaluate their memory in their secondary language (English) than their primary language (Spanish). This suggests that bilingual individuals may more closely monitor their ongoing cognitive functioning when trying to learn and remember information that is not in their native language.