Differences in Working Memory With Emotional Distraction Between Proficient and Non-proficient Bilinguals

Xie Ma; Xiao Ma; Peng Li; Yan Liu

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01414

Differences in Working Memory With Emotional Distraction Between Proficient and Non-proficient Bilinguals

Front Psychol. 2020 Jun 18:11:1414. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01414. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Xie Ma^{1

2}, Xiao Ma^{1

2}, Peng Li^{1

2}, Yan Liu³

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Education, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming, China.
² Key Laboratory of Educational Information for Nationalities, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming, China.
³ Faculty of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, China.

Abstract

The impact of bilingual education and bilingual experience on working memory has been an important and controversial issue in the field of psycholinguistics. Taking Chinese-English bilinguals as an example, this study aims to investigate the differences in emotional working memory between proficient and non-proficient bilinguals by using delayed matching-to-sample task paradigm and the more complex N-back task in emotional contexts. The results show that proficient bilinguals may have better performance on both of these two working memory tasks than non-proficient bilinguals, and the advantage effects can be more apparent under high memory load conditions. In addition, the negative emotion context could have a positive impact on complex N-back tasks. This study supports the notion that bilingual experience can promote the development of an individual's cognitive ability and enable individuals to possess more advantages in working memory even in the presence of emotional contexts.

Keywords: emotional working memory; negative emotion; non-proficient bilinguals; positive emotion; proficient bilinguals.