Suet Mui Ma
Working Memory in
Spanish–English and Chinese–English Bilinguals
Speaking more than one language has its
benefits. For example, bilinguals have demonstrated greater working
memory capacity when compared to monolinguals in numerous studies. But what is
it about bilingualism that may lead to such an advantage? And are all
bilinguals equally benefitted despite similarity or dissimilarity of the
languages they speak?
Suet Mui Ma (Debby), a senior at Brigham Young
University-Hawaii, hypothesized that Chinese-English bilinguals would have
a greater working memory on visual-spatial task than Spanish-English
bilinguals, while controlling for language proficiency and gender differences.
Debby was inspired, as a bilingual student, to investigate this area as
she has had personal experience in the perceived discrepancies between
different language speakers.
Students from a diverse multicultural University
were recruited for her study. Participants were proficient in two
languages, either Spanish-English or Chinese-English. Participants were given
self-rated language proficiency questions from the American Council Teaching of
Foreign Languages (ACTFL). Participants then engaged in a paper folding
task to measure working memory. This task involved mental rotation and
serial operations. The results supported the hypothesis that
Chinese-English bilinguals have greater working memory than
Spanish-English bilinguals.
What was most
challenging and most exciting thing about your study?
"Finding Chinese-English bilinguals was the
easy part because of my connections. However, Spanish-English bilinguals
are hard to come by. It took a lot of face-to-face invitation and social
media outreach to find participants for my study. After running the
statistics, my first results were not significant. Then I decided to use
an ANCOVA to control for gender and self-reported English level. Then I
got really excited; my results were significant! My hypothesis that
Chinese-English bilinguals would have a greater working memory than
Spanish-English bilinguals was supported!"
What were some
interesting experiences you had while conducting your study?
"Observing the subjects while participating
in the study was so interesting. You could see the reaction differences
between the two groups of bilinguals. There was definitely a difference
in the speed of Spanish-English bilinguals compared to Chinese-English
bilinguals. Both groups showed struggles in the task as they scratched
their heads and mumbled to themselves."
What advice would you give other undergraduate students prior to conducting their own psychological research?
"I would recommend students to take some fundamental psych classes before they conduct their own psychological research. The more classes they take, the more ideas they will have for their research. From my own experience, I took most of the psych classes before conducting my research. After taking multivariate statistics and biopsychology, it was a lot easier for me to find research on my topic as well as finding the best analyses for my experiment. Attending psychology research labs (496R) is very valuable. It helps students to know more about the processes of doing research. PSYC 496R preveiews PSYC 305 and 490, as students get the hands-on experience in research."
Debby plans to graduate in the Fall of 2016 from Brigham Young University-Hawaii as a psychology major. In the Spring of 2016, Debby presented her study in China at the Xi'an Conference where it then went on to get published in Psychology and Behavioral Sciences journal. Debby plans to continue her education onto graduate school in the clinical field. She remarks learning applicable statistical analyses and having many great opportunities to participate in research and present that research to the public as an undergraduate psychology major at Brigham Young University-Hawaii.
Debby plans to graduate in the Fall of 2016 from Brigham Young University-Hawaii as a psychology major. In the Spring of 2016, Debby presented her study in China at the Xi'an Conference where it then went on to get published in Psychology and Behavioral Sciences journal. Debby plans to continue her education onto graduate school in the clinical field. She remarks learning applicable statistical analyses and having many great opportunities to participate in research and present that research to the public as an undergraduate psychology major at Brigham Young University-Hawaii.
