Language-dependent recall of autobiographical memories

Two studies of autobiographical memory explored the hypothesis that memorie s become more accessible when the Linguistic environment at retrieval match es the linguistic environment at encoding. In Experiment 1, Russian-English bilinguals were asked to recall specific life experiences in response to w ord prompts. The results supported the hypothesis of language-dependent rec all: Participants retrieved more experiences from the Russian-speaking peri od of their lives when interviewed in Russian and more experiences from the English-speaking period of their lives when interviewed in English. In Exp eriment 2, the language of the interview was varied independently from the language of the word prompts. Both variables were found to influence autobi ographical recall. These findings show that language at the time of retriev al, like other forms of context, plays a significant role in determining wh at will be remembered.