Investigating the Effects of Second Language Background, Proficiency, and Usage on Episodic Memory in Middle-Aged and Older Adults.

As the aging population grows, it is important to investigate factors that protect against cognitive decline. Bilingualism is hypothesized to contribute to cognitive reserve. However, the research on the influence of bilingualism and related variables (e.g., age of second language [L2] acquisition a...

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Publicado en:Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue Canadienne de Psychologie Expérimentale Vol. 80; no. 1; pp. 1 - 10
Autores principales: Fares, Bassam Jeryous, Taler, Vanessa
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Canadian Psychological Association Mar2026
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Mar2026
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        atl: Investigating the Effects of Second Language Background, Proficiency, and Usage on Episodic Memory in Middle-Aged and Older Adults.
      aug:
        au:
          Fares, Bassam Jeryous
          Taler, Vanessa
        affil:
          Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa
          School of Psychology, University of Ottawa
          Bruyere Research Institute, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
      su:
        Alberta
        Québec (Province)
        Ontario
        Communicative competence
        Cross-sectional method
        Self-evaluation
        Task performance
        Episodic memory
        Age distribution
        Home environment
        Multilingualism
        Nonverbal communication
        Aging
        Language acquisition
        Educational attainment
        Middle age
        Old age
        Mathematical variables
        Statistical correlation
        Research funding
        Cognitive testing
        Questionnaires
        Descriptive statistics
        English as a foreign language
        Neuropsychological tests
        Research
        Reaction time
        Data analysis software
        Confidence intervals
        Verbal behavior
        Regression analysis
      sug:
        subj:
          Communicative competence
          Cross-sectional method
          Self-evaluation
          Task performance
          Episodic memory
          Age distribution
          Home environment
          Multilingualism
          Nonverbal communication
          Aging
          Language acquisition
          Educational attainment
          Middle age
          Old age
          Alberta
          Québec (Province)
          Ontario
          Language Schools
          Mathematical variables
          Statistical correlation
          Research funding
          Cognitive testing
          Questionnaires
          Descriptive statistics
          English as a foreign language
          Neuropsychological tests
          Research
          Reaction time
          Data analysis software
          Confidence intervals
          Verbal behavior
          Regression analysis
      keyword:
        aging
        bilingualism
        episodic memory
        language
        older adults
        aging
        bilingualism
        episodic memory
        language
        older adults
      ab: As the aging population grows, it is important to investigate factors that protect against cognitive decline. Bilingualism is hypothesized to contribute to cognitive reserve. However, the research on the influence of bilingualism and related variables (e.g., age of second language [L2] acquisition and language usage) on episodic memory remains sparse. We investigate the role of L2 age of acquisition, proficiency, and usage on verbal and nonverbal episodic memory in middle-aged and older adult bilingual speakers of English and French. Accuracy on a verbal memory task was negatively associated with L2 usage at work. People with lower L2 proficiency and usage at home performed better on a nonverbal memory task in terms of accuracy and reaction time, respectively. Earlier L2 acquisition was associated with higher accuracy on the nonverbal memory task. We hypothesize that greater L2 engagement leads to increased effort to inhibit nonrelevant stimuli, impeding episodic memory retrieval, and the effort required is lower with earlier L2 acquisition.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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