REALITY MONITORING,PSYCHOLOGICAL TOOLS,AND COGNITIVE FLEXIBILITY IN BILINGUALS: THEORETICAL SYNTHESIS AND PILOT EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION*

An attempt was made to bring about a theoretical synthesis of such seemingly unrelated concepts as ‘reality monitoring’ (belonging to contemporary American cognitive psychology), ‘psychological tools’ (suggested by Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky in the 1930s), and ‘cognitive flexibility in bilinguals’ (developed by Canadian researchers in the 1970s). Psychological tools of symbolic character which-as Vygotsky and his followers suggested-mediate human actions and mental operations, were shown to improve reality monitoring, i.e., subject's ability to discriminate between memories of words that he/she either spoke or merely thought. The concept of cognitive flexibility was applied to reality monitoring in Russian-English bilinguals. It was shown that greater cognitive flexibility associated with balanced bilingualism enhances a subject's ability to discriminate memories of words said and words thought. Suggestions are made concerning further possible experimental investigations.