Assessing working memory capacity in a non-native language

a r t i c l e i n f o The present studies directly test the usefulness of two English-language working memory capacity (WMC) assessments with two samples of students whose native language was not English. Participants completed two widely used complex span tasks, Reading Span (RSpan) and Operation Span (OSpan), in English. To determine whether the well-established relationship between WMC and Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (RAPM) would be observed when span tasks were not given in the native language of the participant, span scores were regressed against performance on the RAPM. Results indicated that while OSpan was a reliable and valid predictor of RAPM in non-native-English speakers, RSpan administered in English was not. Given the increasing population of individuals who speak more than one language, a topic of growing interest is the effect of bilingualism on cognition and the mechanisms that underlie effective bilingual memory and language processing. Many recent studies have explored how bilingualism affects executive functioning, flexibility Importantly, a methodological point that has not been subject to much scrutiny in previous studies on bilinguals is the language in which various cognitive tests are performed. Specifically, little attention has been given to the linguistic background of participants in many cognitive experiments at English-speaking universities. In these settings, assessments of executive functioning and general cognitive abilities are routinely administered only in English. Although many cognitive tasks have been shown to be reliable and valid measures for native speakers, it is imperative to determine whether these same tasks are reliable and valid predictors of ability when given in a non-native language. This point seems especially relevant for tasks with a large verbal component, such as one of the most popular working memory span tasks (e.g., Reading Span). The present study directly tests the usefulness of English-language working memory capacity assessments with a population whose native language is not English. Working memory capacity (WMC) has emerged in the past 30+ years as a powerful predictor of performance across a myriad of tasks WMC is typically assessed using complex span tasks with two distinct components (1) a processing component, and (2) a concurrent storage component in which the participant attempts to remember unrelated information for later recall (see Conway et al., 2005 for a review). As these tasks require participants to process and store information concurrently, complex span tasks are considered measures of a domain-general cognitive ability which some have argued …