Previous cognitive research on transfer of learning in bilingual participan
ts has used simple tasks such as word learning. In the present study, an an
alogical transfer paradigm was used to examine transfer of high-level conce
ptual information between languages. Experiment 1 examined analogical trans
fer from a single source story to a target problem in the same or in a diff
erent language with Spanish-English bilinguals. Experiment 2 exploited the
competitive nature of retrieval in analogical transfer using a more sensiti
ve design in which the target problem was preceded by two source analogs su
ggesting different solutions. Even with a total of 207 participants across
the two experiments, transfer was not significantly or substantially affect
ed by the match or mismatch between the languages of the source and target
problems. However, in Experiment 2, the competition between alternative sou
rce analogs was greater when the languages of the two analogs matched than
when they mismatched. These experiments show that the aspects of memory rep
resentations important for higher-order processes such as analogical transf
er are primarily language-general and that language-specific features play
only a minor role when retrieving and applying information relevant to prob
lem-solving. (C) 1999 Academic Press.