Many learners in South Africa first encounter English when it is used as a medium of
instruction at the start of formal schooling. This has ramifications for literacy
acquisition and academic performance. Working memory is responsible for distributing
cognitive resources among the various processing and storage tasks. It has been pivotal
in many cognitive theories linking working memory to academic skills like reading
comprehension and mathematics ability. In addition, research indicates that both Short
Term Memory (STM) and Working Memory (WM) are instrumental in cognitive
processing but that in bilinguals their roles are more complex than they are in
monolinguals. This research explored the capacity of WM and the role of WM in
reading comprehension and mathematical ability in two South African populations: a
monolingual English group (L1) and a bilingual Afrikaans/English group (L2). No
significant differences were found in the WM capacity of the two groups. In the second
part of the study it was found that both reading comprehension and bilingualism depend
on the same verbal domain resources of WM, which act as constraining factors for the
L2 group. However, in the L1 group, there appeared to be less competition for verbal
domain resources and more for visuospatial resources probably due to the phase of
literacy acquisition these learners were in. In terms of WM and mathematical ability it
was found that bilinguals exceed their storage capacity (STM) before they run out of
processing capacity (WM). STM therefore is a constraining factor for this group.
However, for the L1 group, visuospatial processing is the constraining factor. The
research concludes that bilinguals use WM both for semantic processing of their nondominant
language and for complex cognitive processing. While the WM capacity for
monolingual and bilingual learners appears to be equivalent, the way the resources are
allocated during cognitive tasks differ.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/7230 |
| Date | 10 September 2009 |
| Creators | Van Rooyen, Tahiti |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf |
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