Two Measures of Bilingualism in the Memories of Immigrants and Indigenous Minorities

Two indices of bilingualism, crossover memories and codeswitching (CS), were
explored in five groups of immigrant (English–Hebrew, Georgian–HebrewRussian–Hebrew)
and indigenous bilinguals (Arabic–Hebrew, Hebrew–English). Participants recalled memories
in response to cue words and then were asked to report the language of retrieval and provide
a more elaborate narrative.More memories were ‘same language’ memories, recalled in
the language of the experimental session/cueword, but asmany as 48%of thememorieswere
crossovers, i.e. memories reported in a language other than the language of the session/cue
word. In an effort to examine the ecological validity of the self-reported language of the
memories, the frequency of CS in the elaborated narratives was investigated. For the entire
sample, more CS was found for self-reported crossover memories in L2 sessions. In a further
analysis of CS in crossover memories, collapsed across L1 and L2 sessions, significant
differences emerged between immigrants and indigenous bilinguals. Differences between
immigrant and non-immigrant bilinguals are discussed in terms of the role of activation in
crossover memories.