Memory for numbers in monolinguals and bilinguals

Forty-six subjects were assigned to two groups according to a reaction time technique: one monolingual group of 14 subjects with German as the dominant language and one group of 32 German-Swedish bilingual subjects balanced in skills. The subjects were given short-term memory tasks on numbers presented aurally and a visually presented prose text involving both short-term and long-term memory processes. The results provide evidence that two language systems actively used in daily communication affect both speed and memory span for digits: when compared with monolingual subjects, balanced bilinguals read more slowly and showed a higher error rate in the recall of two-digit numbers. The results support a hypothesis of interdependent bilingual storage.