PROCESSES OF WORDS MEMORY IN 2ND-LANGUAGE ACQUISITION - A TEST OF BILINGUAL DUAL CODING THEORY

Three experiments were carried out to investigate whether the bilingua l dual coding theory is fit for early- and late-balanced bilinguals an d second language learners. All experiments required them to encode a mixed list of their first and second language (L1 and L2) words by tra nslating L1 words and copying L2 words with either imagery or non-imag ery instruction. The subjects were then asked unexpectedly to free rec all L2 words they had generated. The results of Experiment 1 and 2 sho wed that item recall was best for the imagery condition, intermediate for the translation with non-imagery condition, and worst for the copy ing with non-imagery condition in an approximately 3: 2: 1 ratio. The additive effect reflected in the above ratio was interpreted as suppor ting the bilingual dual coding theory which assumes the independent an d interconnected storage systems for bilingual words memory. In Experi ment 3, however, the additive effect was only partially observed. It w as suggested that the bilingual dual coding theory was not applicable to second language learners who had not developed sufficient interconn ections between the second language system and the imagery system.