Internal languages of retrieval: The bilingual encoding of memories for the personal past

In contrast to most research on bilingual memory that focuses on how words in either lexicon are mapped onto memory for objects and concepts, we focus on memory for events in the personal past. Using a word-cue technique in s essions devoted exclusively to one language, we found that older Hispanic i mmigrants who had come to the United States as adults internally retrieved autobiographical memories in Spanish for events in the country of origin an d in English for events in the U.S. These participants were consistently ca pable of discerning whether a memory had come to them "in words" or not, re flecting the distinction between purely imagistic or conceptual memories an d specifically linguistic memories. Via examination of other phenomenologic al features of these memories (sense of reliving, sensory detail, emotional ity and rehearsal), we conclude that the linguistic/nonlinguistic distincti on is fundamental and independent of these other characteristics. Bilingual s encode and retrieve certain autobiographical memories in one or the other language according to the context of encoding, and these linguistic charac teristics are stable properties of those memories over time.