Free recall of trilingual lists

Abstract

Subjects fluent in English, French, and Spanish recalled lists consisting of words in one, two, or all three languages. The component of recall identified with primary memory was identical for unilingual, bilingual, and trilingual lists, but the secondary-memory component was appreciably greater for unilingual than multilingual lists. The main conclusions of the experiment were: (a) a multilingual person's different languages exist in relative isolation from each other; (b) organization of list words into higher-order memory units is more difficult between different languages than within a single language; and (c) lower recall of multilingual lists reflects reduced accessibility of information about list words.