Bilingual organization in free recall

Abstract

Two groups of Ss, one bilingual in English and French, the other in English and Russian, were tested individually and presented different types of 40-item lists of common words with instructions for free recall. Some were Category lists—those with four sets of 10 words each concerned with a distinctive class of events—and some were No-Category lists—those with 40 items selected so as not to suggest distinctive semantic categories. For the No-Category case, one list was in English, one in French (or Russian) and one “mixed,” i.e., including items from both languages. For the Category case, one list was in English, one in the other language, one mixed but Concordant, i.e., particular semantic categories were in one language while other categories were in the other language, and one mixed so that language and semantic content were Discordant, i.e., within a category items were drawn from both languages. Attention was given to the number of items correctly recalled, the types of errors made, the extent of both category and language clustering. Various results suggest that organization according to semantic categories is a more useful schema than is language for bilinguals. However, the bilingual nature of the mixed lists does not disrupt recall in the No-Category condition although it can be a disruption when demands for reorganization are strong, as is the case in the Category conditions. Nevertheless, the bilingual still profits from the organizational possibilities of the Category lists, even in the discordant case, indicating that an associationistic interpretation of category clustering is insufficient.