The comparison of working memory performance of Turkish children with monolingual and bilingual

Working memory is a memory system in which information is stored, encoded and processed for a short time. Working memory consists of three components: phonological loop, visual-spatial sketchpad and central executive. In the international literature, different studies have been conducted on the working memory of bilinguals. Different results were obtained in these studies. There are findings on different types of bilingualism and different sub-components of working memory in studies. In most of the studies, it has been revealed that the working memory performance of bilinguals is higher than that of monolinguals. However, studies on working memory in our country are very limited and there are no studies on working memory of bilinguals. The main purpose of this study is to reveal whether there is a significant difference between the working memory performances of bilingual and monolingual children as a result of the research to be conducted on all areas of working memory, which is considered to have a great effect on language. A total of 40 students voluntarily participated in this study, selected from the 1st grade students, including Turkish monolingual (n=20) and Turkish-Russian bilingual (n=20). According to the applied Working Memory Scale data, Russian-Turkish bilingual children outperformed Turkish monolingual children in verbal short-term memory, verbal working memory, visual short-term memory, verbal memory, visual memory and working memory. Although Russian-Turkish bilingual children outperformed Turkish monolingual children in visual working memory, the data in this area were not statistically significant. The findings obtained from the study were discussed in the context of the literature.