¡Hola! Nice to Meet You: Language Mixing and Biographical Information Processing

Abstract

In bilingual communities, social interactions take place in both single- and mixed-language contexts. Some of the information shared in multilingual conversations, such as interlocutors' personal information, is often required in consequent social encounters. In this study, we explored whether the autobiographical information provided in a single-language context is better remembered than in an equivalent mixed-language situation. More than 400 Basque-Spanish bilingual (pre) teenagers were presented with new persons who introduced themselves by either using only Spanish or only Basque, or by inter-sententially mixing both languages. Different memory measures were collected immediately after the initial exposure to the new pieces of information (immediate recall and recognition) and on the day after (delayed recall and recognition). In none of the time points was the information provided in a mixed-language fashion worse remembered than that provided in a strict one-language context. Interestingly, the variability across participants in their sociodemographic and linguistic variables had a negligible impact on the effects. These results are discussed considering their social and educational implications for bilingual communities.

Keywords: bilingual schooling; code-switching; language mixing; multilingual learning.

Figure 1

Example of the presentation of a male and a female avatar in the food assignation item.

Figure 2

Graphical representation of the parameter estimates of the significant fixed effect Level of Basque (upper left plot) and Day (upper right), and the Language*Age (lower left) and Day*Age (lower right) interactions.