title: Two measures of bilingualism in the memories of immigrants and indigenous minorities: crossover memories and codeswitching.
abstract: Two indices of bilingualism, crossover memories and codeswitching (CS), were explored in five groups of immigrant (English-Hebrew, Georgian-Hebrew Russian-Hebrew) and indigenous bilinguals (Arabic-Hebrew, Hebrew-English). Participants recalled memories in response to cue words and then were asked to report the language of retrieval and provide a more elaborate narrative. More memories were 'same language' memories, recalled in the language of the experimental session/cue word, but as many as 48 % of the memories were crossovers, i.e. memories reported in a language other than the language of the session/cue word. In an effort to examine the ecological validity of the self-reported language of the memories, the frequency of CS in the elaborated narratives was investigated. For the entire sample, more CS was found for self-reported crossover memories in L2 sessions. In a further analysis of CS in crossover memories, collapsed across L1 and L2 sessions, significant differences emerged between immigrants and indigenous bilinguals. Differences between immigrant and non-immigrant bilinguals are discussed in terms of the role of activation in crossover memories.
authors: School of Education, Bar Ilan University, 52900 , Ramat Gan, Israel, carmit.altman@biu.ac.il.
authors: Carmit
authors: C
authors: Altman
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D054242:Emigrants and Immigrants / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D019303:Multilingualism; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests