Bilingualism and false memories: an experimental study using the DRM paradigm

We know from literature that emotion plays a fundamental role in memory and linguistic ability. The aim of this study is to examine the well acknowledged phenomenon of false memories. Specifically, the present research represents the attempt to address the problem of false memories produced through the DRM paradigm, on bilingual and monolingual Italian children, with the desire to verify how the concept of arousal behaves on the semantic elaboration of minority language bilinguals. 122 Italian children were presented with neutral and negative emotional Deese-RoedigerMcDermott (DRM) lists and different linguistic tests to assess their sematic ability. It emerged that there are no differences in bilingual and monolingual children’s performances. More importantly, it was also detected that bilingualism has no influence regarding the number of false memories recalled. Regarding the arousal, it is proven to be particularly significant in false memories productions, mostly in bilingual population. Together, these findings indicate that children with higher comprehension in vocabulary are more able to memorize but they are also more prone to memories distorsions.