Bilingual Versus Monolingual Performance Within Memory Suppression

Bilingual participants have been argued to have a cognitive inhibitory advantage over monolinguals resulting in a faster ability to inhibit information. However, the advantage has not been studied using the item-method within the Directed Forgetting (DF) paradigm, which is suggested to cause inhibition through remember and forget instructions. As the DF paradigm uses a recall and then recognition task format, the current study also investigated the possibility of retrieval-practice effects of the recall task on recognition. By utilizing the item-method with recall and no-recall conditions, the possible bilingual cognitive advantage, role of inhibition in DF, and potential retrieval-practice effects were investigated. I recruited 73 students (25 bilingual) at a southern California college who participated in exchange for course credit. Participants completed a Directed Forgetting learning task, followed by either a recall or Stroop task, then a recognition test, and finally the LexTALE-Esp as a language proficiency measure. Suppression was measured through ‘To Be Remembered’ (TBR) and ‘To Be Forgotten’ (TBF) words. Compared with TBF, TBR had increased recall and recognition rates, and produced a retrieval-practice effect (e.g., faster recognition response times and higher recognition accuracy rates for words recalled). Bilingual participants showed no advantage relative to monolinguals. These results call into question the role of inhibition in DF, show an important confounding variable of retrieval-practice in previous methodologies, and extend the research showing no evidence of a bilingual advantage