Auditory Working Memory in Monolinguals and Bilinguals – A Comparison Using Auditory “N” Back Test

Abstract

Introduction: Auditory working memory is the ability to process information presented orally, analyze it mentally and store it to be recalled later. There are various methods to measure auditory memory skills. Auditory n-back is one of the frequently used methods to measure auditory working memory. Studies on the impact of bilingualism on cognitive development point out that bilingualism in children is associated with increased metacognitive skills and superior divergent thinking ability and with better performance on some perceptual tasks and classification tasks. The present study was taken up to investigate the auditory working memory in bilingual children using auditory 2 back task and to compare with that of monolingual children.

Method: A total of 60 subjects, which consisted of both monolingual and bilingual children, participated in the study. Stimuli for the study was prepared by using 7 common bi-syllabic words in Malayalam, out of which 5 words were repeated twice to make a string of 12 words. Children were instructed to say “yes” if the stimulus was repeated 2 steps back and say “no” if the stimulus was not repeated.

Results: The result indicated that bilingual children performed significantly better than monolingual children in auditory 2 back task (p>0.05) suggesting that the processing capacity for bilingual children is better than that of monolingual children.

Conclusion: Results of the present study indicated a better performance in auditory working memory for bilingual children than that of monolinguals. There may be a positive effect on the formation of cognitive processes in early bilinguals.