Culture & Psychology

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Bilingual Autobiographical Memory: Experimental Studies and Clinical

Cases
Robert W. Schrauf
Culture Psychology 2000; 6; 387
DOI: 10.1177/1354067X0064001

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Abstract This paper argues that the consecutive bilingual’s dual

cultural-linguistic self-representations act as filters for memory
retrieval of events from the personal past. Examination of work in
experimental psychology on bilingual autobiographical memory
and clinical case reports from psychoanalytic therapy with
bilinguals suggests that memory retrievals for events from
childhood and youth (in the country of origin) are more
numerous, more detailed and more emotionally marked when
remembering is done in the first language (‘mother tongue’)
rather than in the second language. The mechanism accounting
for this phenomenon has been identified as encoding specificity
and state-dependent learning, where the bilingual’s languages are
considered the operative ‘states’ at encoding and retrieval. The
paper suggests that this notion of ‘states’ be refined to include
cultural-linguistic self-representations attending language
socialization in first and second cultures. Such language-specific
self-representations act as linguistically mediated ‘states’ that may
or may not match similar states at encoding and thus account for
qualitative and quantitative differences in retrieval.
Key Words acculturation, bilingual memory, self and culture

Robert W. Schrauf
Northwestern University, USA

Bilingual Autobiographical Memory:

Experimental Studies and Clinical
Cases

This paper takes as its subject the fluent bilingual individual, particu-
larly the consecutive bilingual who learns first one language through
socialization in the ‘mother culture’, and, subsequently, a second
language through socialization in a ‘second culture’. This change in
cultural experience and shift to new cultural competence implies

Culture & Psychology Copyright © 2000 SAGE Publications

(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Vol. 6(4): 387–417 [1354–067X(200012) 6:4; 387–417; 014476]

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Culture & Psychology 6(4)

extensive mental and emotional adaptation. Insofar as these cultural

ways-of-being-in-the-world are indexed by language, we might ask:
does this massive change in cognitive-affective framework imply that
personal memories of life in the homeland will be more difficult to
retrieve after adaptation to the new culture? To use a crude physical
analogy: will the new software read the old files?
Not surprisingly, the answer is Yes and No. Yes, memories from any
period of life, childhood in particular, may be accessed or retrieved or
reconstructed from within the second language. No, retrieval is not the
same in both languages. Memories from childhood, when retrieved in
the mother tongue, for example, may be more numerous, more
detailed, more emotional or more vibrant than when retrieved in the
second language. One explanation, a cognitive one, for why this might
be is that remembering can be state-dependent (Weingartner, 1978). If
the language spoken (a qualitative ‘state’) at the time of retrieval
matches the language spoken (another qualitative ‘state’) at the time
of memory encoding, then retrieval will be more successful.
Another explanation, a cultural-psychological one, is that the bilin-
gual individual, in speaking one or the other of her languages, acti-
vates a ‘language-specific self’ that acts as a filter through which
memories are both encoded and retrieved. Thus, memories for child-
hood events are ‘filtered through’ a socioculturally constituted, lin-
guistically mediated, first-language self (e.g. the Venezuelan recalling
in Spanish her first days in school). Memories for recent events, mean-
while, are ‘filtered through’ a socioculturally constituted, linguistically
mediated, second-language self (e.g. the same Venezuelan recalling in
English her argument with the toll booth operator on the New Jersey
turnpike). The self is multiple (Ewing, 1990), culturally constituted
(Shweder & Bourne, 1982; Shweder & Miller, 1991) and linguistically
conditioned. This explanation is consistent with state-dependent
learning, but it identifies self-representations as the ‘states’ which con-
dition both encoding and later retrieval. These self-representations are
in turn conditioned by the languages that attend them.

Language Socialization and the Construction of Social

Worlds
Theoretically, this research rests on the language socialization
paradigm in linguistic anthropology. A principal tenet of this approach
is that ‘children develop in a linguistically and socioculturally struc-
tured environment and that these two domains interface as the child
acquires linguistic and sociocultural competence’ (Ochs, 1988, p. 21).

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Schrauf Bilingual Autobiographical Memory

In childhood language socialization, language learning provides the

child with the tools with which to construct the social world along the
patterns of other members of the culture (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986).
Language learning in this sense crucially involves learning the prag-
matics of language use in specific contexts. As Ochs (1988) points out,
This approach to language acquisition advocates Vygotsky’s notion that
activity settings ‘arrange for’ development to take place. . . . It should be
kept in mind, however, that societies differ in ways that activities are
organized, both in terms of the tasks undertaken and in terms of the roles
expected of more- or less-competent participants. (p. 22)

Though the empirical work in the language socialization paradigm

focuses on the childhood acquisition of cultural competence, the
dynamics would seem to be similar for the adult’s acquisition of a
second language later in life in a cultural setting different from his or
her ‘mother culture’. Language learning under these circumstances is
far more than learning translation equivalents for words in the mother
tongue. In Bourdieu’s terms: languages are culturally embedded prac-
tices (1977, 1990). The immigrant finds herself in situation after
situation (activity settings) in which language learning effectively
mediates (‘arranges for’) the development of cultural competence.
Persons whose project is acculturation in a second culture must learn
the pragmatics of language use in appropriate contexts, and in this
process second-language learning functions as a ‘tool or medium in the
socialization process’ (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986, p. 167).
In this view, different languages are not simply alternative codes for
a common world, but rather an integral part of the construction of very
different sociocultural worlds. Culture and language are intimately
interdependent—to speak of one is to speak of the other. (Readers of
Culture & Psychology will hardly find this new.) In this regard, the view
I take of culture is cognitive (‘culture in the head’). Culture at the level
of the enculturated individual is
. . . competence in the ideational realm that constitutes a culture—schemata,
scripts, models, frames, and other images of the organization and contextu-
alization of knowledge that are culturally constituted, socially distributed,
and personally construed. (Poole, 1994, pp. 833–834)

For the individual, schemata are interrelated in hierarchical fashion,

they are activated in context-dependent ways, and they include moti-
vational properties (D’Andrade, 1992; Strauss, 1992). These include the
internalized practices of daily social and cultural life: Bourdieu’s
notion of habitus (1977, 1990). Since both of these cognitive and
‘habitual’ understandings of culture are developmentally linked to

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Culture & Psychology 6(4)

language socialization, I take the liberty in what follows of talking

about language and culture interchangeably.

Asking the Question from Experimental Studies and

Clinical Cases
The source material for this reflection on memory and the bilingual self
is drawn from two very different research traditions: experimental psy-
chology and psychoanalytic therapy. In the case of the nascent, experi-
mental literature in bilingual autobiographical memory, there are
several studies that point to differential retrieval of memories accord-
ing to whether they are cued by or narrated in the first or second
language. The experimental approach addresses the question by inter-
vening, that is, by introducing stimuli in either language and noting
the response. The more numerous clinical cases are observational and
interpretive. Persons in therapy are observed to make breakthroughs
in remembering events as a result of switches in the language of
therapy. Examination of that material yields a typology of cross-
linguistic retrievals suggesting privileged retrieval of childhood
memories in the mother tongue.
At one level, whether or not childhood events are remembered
‘better’ in the mother tongue, and recent events better in the second
language, is an empirical question. Either access to all memories is
independent of the languages spoken at encoding and retrieval or it is
qualified in some way. Let us call the first possibility the Equal Access
Assumption. Thus, it seems natural to assume that a multilingual
person can access all of his or her personal memories from as many
languages as he or she speaks. Bilinguals do not commonly report
amnesia in one language for events that occurred while speaking the
other. Let us call an alternative possibility the Mother Tongue Hypoth-
esis. Thus, it seems natural to think that a person whose childhood and
youth were spent wholly in the culture of origin, speaking the mother
tongue, but who now lives in a second culture, and speaks a second
language, would be more likely to remember more detail and ‘get the
feel’ of his or her early memories if recollection were done in the first
language. Of course, it is likely that the answer lies somewhere
between these two possibilities, and an examination of the empirical
data from experiments and clinical cases will provide a way of articu-
lating that answer.
At another level, if the language of retrieval does in fact affect the
quantity and quality of remembering, there is the theoretical question
of what might account for this. As indicated above, state-dependent

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Schrauf Bilingual Autobiographical Memory

learning may be the best candidate, and within this overall framework,
it may be that cultural-linguistically conditioned self-representations
act as filters for both encoding and retrieval. All autobiographical
remembering takes place in some determinate social context for some
particular purpose (Schrauf, 1997), and within these social contexts
people activate particular self-representations. I would argue that even
here in the rarefied atmosphere of psychological experiment and
psychoanalytic therapy, individuals are activating particular self-
representations. I would argue further that the self-representations
activated in these cases are uniquely tied to the bilingual’s conscious-
ness of being bilingual and bicultural.
In bilingual experiments, the participant typically knows (or can
guess) that her languages are at issue in some way (Grosjean, 1998). In
therapy, the bilingual client who suddenly sees her way through to a
murky past event via the window of the mother tongue is made con-
sciously aware of her bilingual status. In these cases, whatever self-
representation is activated is attended by (I would argue: conditioned
by) conscious awareness of the language spoken. This bodes well for
reflecting on the possibility that a linguistically conditioned self acts as
a filter for memory. Given the intimate linkage between language and
culture, both the bilingual memory experiment and the bilingual
analytic hour may be privileged loci for the heightened awareness of
linguistic (and therefore cultural) ‘selves’. Experiment and therapy,
then, are ideal places to look for answers to the question: how does the
language of retrieval affect bilingual autobiographical remembering?

Experiments from the Cognitive Literature

For me, the word ‘church’ elicits an image of one or another Canadian
Protestant or Catholic church. The Finnish equivalent ‘kirkko’ elicits a vague
image of the white, wood-frame, Finnish Lutheran church in the region of
Sudbury where I lived between the ages of four and eight years. (Paivio,
1991, p. 124)
There has been extensive investigation of bilingual memory, primarily
semantic and episodic bilingual memory, in cognitive psychology and
psycholinguistics (De Groot & Kroll, 1997; Harris, 1992; Hummel,
1993). The principal debate concerns how the bilingual’s languages are
represented at lexical and referential levels (Kroll & De Groot, 1997).
The basic question is: how does form (phonetic, morphemic and lexical
form, i.e. words) map onto meaning (semantic referents, i.e. mental
concepts and images)?
In these studies of bilingual semantic and episodic memory, two
early models of mapping-form-to-meaning set out the alternatives:

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Culture & Psychology 6(4)

either there are two memory stores linked to two languages (lexicons)
along with a translator mechanism between the languages—the
Separate Stores Model, or there is just one memory store and both
languages are represented through it—the Common Store Model (for
review, see Hamers & Blanc, 1989). In the laboratory, however, differ-
entiating between the models seemed largely a function of the tasks
employed. Lexical tasks supported the two-store Separate Stores
Model. Conceptual tasks supported a Common Stores Model (Dur-
gunoglu & Roediger, 1987).
This led to the development of Revised Hierarchical Models (Dufour
& Kroll, 1995; Kroll & Sholl, 1992; Kroll et al., 1992; Kroll & Stewart,
1994; Sholl, Sankaranarayanan, & Kroll, 1995) which posit three com-
ponents: two lexical stores, one for each of the two languages, and one
conceptual store. The inter-linkages between these components exhibit
varying degrees of strength. A novice bilingual would have no links
between the second language and the conceptual store and would be
forced to access semantic referents through the first-language lexicon
(think-then-translate-then-speak). Expert bilinguals would have devel-
oped much stronger links from the second-language lexicon to the
conceptual store (think in the second language), though the second-
language lexicon would remain dependent on the first.
More recently, De Groot (1992a, 1992b, 1993) has proposed a Con-
ceptual Features Model, inspired by semantic activation and parallel
distributed processing paradigms. According to this model, first- and
second-language words differentially activate distributed conceptual
features. Concrete words correspond to meanings shared across lan-
guages and hence activate the same referents at the conceptual level.
More abstract words require more contextualization and hence activate
a complex of features unique to one language.
In sum, the question of mapping form to meaning has been asked
primarily at the level of individual words and mental referents. Here it
is asked at the level of discourse, that is, in terms of autobiographical
memory rather than semantic memory; in terms of recollections of
complex life experiences rather than memory for words or translation
equivalents. Discourse is also the place where one is likely to encounter
enactments of particular self-representations. Even in the contrivance
of psychological experiment, autobiographical memories involve the
‘narrated self’ (Ochs & Capps, 1996; Polkinghorne, 1991) because
memories are most often stories. The studies reviewed below represent
this introductory work at the level of discourse on autobiographical
bilingual memory.

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Schrauf Bilingual Autobiographical Memory

The Effects: Differential Sampling of Memory According to

Language
Eight experiments dealing with autobiographical memory are rep-
resented in Table 1. They are grouped according to experimental
paradigm: cued recall, free recall and narrative methods. The cued recall
procedure is quite simple: the participant in the experiment is pre-
sented with a cue word and asked to think of an autobiographical
event from his or her life associated with the cue (Crovitz & Schiffman,
1974; Galton, 1879). After completing a number of such memory
retrievals, the participant returns to the retrievals and provides dates
for each of the memories. Typically the question posed is: are memories
cued in the first language earlier on average than memories cued in
the second language? This is the method of six experiments (Bugelski,
1977; Marian & Neisser, 2000, Experiments 1 & 2; Otoya, 1987; Schrauf
& Rubin, 1998, 2000). In the second paradigm, free recall, participants
are asked to generate a number of memories either from within a par-
ticular time frame (e.g. childhood), or according to a framework (e.g.
the story of your life). Otoya (1987) asked for memories from child-
hood. Again, typically the question posed is: which language facilitates
access to the earliest memories? Finally, a narrative analysis examines
the linguistic organization of memory report according to some
variable of interest. Javier, Barroso and Muñoz (1993) examine ‘richness
of account’.

Table 1. Experiments from the cognitive literature

Experiment Source N Age Age at L1 L2
immigration
Cued recall Bugelski, 1977 22 M = 55 n.a. Spa. Eng.
Marian & 20 M = 21.8 M = 14.2 Rus. Eng.
Neisser, in press,
Experiment 1
Marian & 24 M = 20.2 M = 13.4 Rus. Eng.
Neisser, in press,
Experiment 2
Otoya, 1987 40 18–26 Range: 7–18 Spa. Eng.
Schrauf & 12 M = 64.6 M = 28.0 Spa. Eng.
Rubin, 1998
Schrauf & 8 M = 65.6 M = 28.0 Spa. Eng.
Rubin, 2000
Free recall Otoya, 1987 40 18–26 7–18 Spa. Eng.
Narrative Javier et al., 1993 5 29–66 n.a. Spa. Eng.

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Culture & Psychology 6(4)

First Paradigm: Cued Recall

Bugelski (1977) reports an early application of the cued recall method
to 22 Spanish–English bilinguals (mean age = 55) who reported not
having spoken Spanish for the previous ten years of their lives. Each
participant received cue words in one language and, one month later,
the translation equivalents of the same words. They were asked ‘to
report on their first thoughts’ to these words. Later they were ‘asked
to locate the time period in their lives to which the “thoughts”seemed
to relate’ according to the following age categories: 1–15, 16–30, 30
years and older. Thoughts reported to English words ‘were primarily
from the mature life period (70%) and 13% from childhood. In contrast,
in response to the Spanish words, only 43% of the thoughts came from
maturity and 45% were from childhood’ (Bugelski, 1977, p. 50).
Though this experiment asks for ‘first thoughts’ to the cue words
(instead of autobiographical memories), it is an example of an early
use of the bilingual cueing procedure. The results suggest that cues in
the first language preferentially tap into first-language/first-culture
memories, whereas cues in the second language activate more recent
memories.
Otoya (1987) tested 40 Spanish–English university students. These
were split into two groups based on age at immigration. Thus, 20 were
simultaneous bilinguals—speaking both languages from birth. Otoya
termed these individuals ‘monoculturals’ because they had grown up
in the United States. The other 20 participants were consecutive bi-
linguals who emigrated between the ages of 7 and 18 and subsequently
learned English. These were ‘biculturals’ because they lived for a time
in their Hispanic countries of origin prior to moving to the US. In the
cued recall portion of the experiment, each participant received ten
words in one language and ten words immediately afterwards in the
other language; six of the ten words were translation equivalents.
Memories were dated afterwards. For both groups (i.e. irrespective of
age at immigration), Spanish words evoked earlier memories than their
English equivalents, though only three of the six pairs reached statis-
tical significance. Again, first-language cues preferentially activate
memories from earlier in life than do second-language cues.
Marian and Neisser (2000: Experiment 1) employed the cuing pro-
cedure with 20 Russian–English bilingual young people (mean age =
21.8; SD = 4.1; mean age at immigration = 14.2; SD = 2.9). Each par-
ticipant received eight cues in Russian during a Russian session and
eight cues in English during an English session. In contrast to the
previous studies, participants did not receive translation equivalents
but rather a list of 16 different words. Participants were asked to tell a

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Schrauf Bilingual Autobiographical Memory

story from their lives in response to each cue. For purposes of analysis,
memories were classified as ‘Russian’ when they commemorated
events in which only Russian was spoken, and as ‘English’ when they
commemorated events in which only English was spoken (with an
additional ‘mixed’ memory for events in which both languages were
spoken). During Russian sessions, more Russian memories were
recalled (M = 5.15 out of a possible 8) than English memories (2.85).
Likewise, during English sessions, more English memories were
recalled (M = 3.35) than Russian memories (1.30). The mean reported
age-at-event was significantly earlier for Russian cues (13.1) than
English cues (16.1). Average age-at-memory for English cues was later
than average age at immigration (14.2). Marian and Neisser demon-
strate a language-congruity effect: the language at the time of retrieval
matches the language at the time of the event.
In a second experiment with 24 Russian–English bilingual students
(mean age = 20.2; mean age at immigration = 13.4), Marian and Neisser
(in press: Experiment 2) varied the cuing procedure by including both
Russian and English words as cues in all sessions, thereby providing
some English cues during Russian sessions and some Russian cues
during English sessions. This made it possible to test the relative influ-
ence of the language ‘ambience’ of the retrieval session vs the language
of the cue. The results showed that both factors acted independently.
Overall, in Russian sessions, more Russian memories (5.88) were
recalled than English memories (4.46); in English sessions, more
English memories (2.67) were recalled than Russian memories (1.13).
But across sessions, Russian word cues triggered more Russian
memories (5.58) than English memories (4.75), and English word cues,
more English memories (2.25) than Russian memories (1.54). This effect
of language ambience on retrieval ‘may be regarded as strengthening
the analogy between language-dependent recall and other forms of
context dependency’ (Marian & Neisser, 2000).
Schrauf and Rubin (1998) varied the above procedures by testing 12
older bilingual participants (mean age = 64.6) who had emigrated to
the US as adults (mean age = 28.0) after having spent childhood and
youth in their Spanish-speaking countries of origin. In addition,
language-specific testing was done on separate days (counterbalanced)
during which only one of the two languages was spoken. Fifty cue
words were given on each day, for a total of 100 memories per
participant. Finally, participants were asked at the end of each session
to review their memories and to indicate which (if any) seemed to them
to have occurred mentally in the language not being used on that
day. On the ‘Spanish day’, a person receiving cues in Spanish and

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Culture & Psychology 6(4)

describing his or her memories in Spanish might identify a memory as

having come in English.
In contrast to all of the previous studies, for these older participants,
there was no significant difference in mean age-at-memory for
memories recalled to cue words in the mother tongue (M = 39.79, SD
= 19.23; range) vs those cued in the second language (M = 40.55, SD =
18.29). Schrauf and Rubin suggested that bilingual fluency might
account for this: these bilinguals were extensively practiced in their
second languages since they had lived and worked professionally in
the US for at least the last 30 years.
However, for those memories cued in one language and marked as
having been retrieved in the other language, significant differences
reassert themselves. The average age-at-memory for retrievals occur-
ring in Spanish (to English cues) was 29.7 years; average age-at-
memory for retrievals in English (to Spanish cues) was 46.5 years. The
distribution of these internal memories is similar to that observed in
previous studies. For the period prior to migration, the percentage of
memories identified as having occurred in Spanish was much higher
(82%) than memories identified as having occurred in English (18%).
For the period after migration, the percentage of English memories
identified as occurring in English was higher (65%) than those in
Spanish (35%).
In a second study of this ‘internal language of retrieval’ and sensory-
related characteristics of memories, Schrauf and Rubin (2000) cued par-
ticipants in Spanish and English and asked them to report whether the
memory ‘came to them in words’ or as an image, and, if in words, to
identify the language of the memory. Thus, the language of internal,
mental retrieval may differ from the language of memory performance
(the ‘telling’). The results accorded with previous studies in that
average age-at-memory for ‘Spanish’ memories, whether cued in
Spanish (M = 28.55, SD = 3.30) or cued in English (M = 26.92, SD =
3.98), were earlier than ‘English’ memories, whether cued in English
(M = 48.2, SD = 3.65) or cued in Spanish (M = 52.89, SD = 4.14). Since
these patterns are observed for memories identified by the participants
as internally retrieved in a specific language (irrespective of the
language of cue), this suggests that the language in which a memory
is encoded is a stable feature of the memory.
In sum, although the number of cued recall studies is small, they
offer experimental confirmation that language significantly affects
autobiographical recall. Generally, first-language cues activate
memories for events that occurred earlier in life than do second-
language cues. The distribution of these memories mirrors this effect:

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Schrauf Bilingual Autobiographical Memory

memories cued in the first language (or identified as having occurred

in the first language) are more numerous for the earlier years of life,
and vice versa.

Second Paradigm: Free Recall

The second experimental paradigm in studies of bilingual auto-
biographical memory is free recall. In Otoya’s study, the 40
Spanish–English bilinguals described previously were asked to think
of three memories from before their eighth birthdays and three
memories for after their fourteenth birthdays. Half of the subjects were
queried in Spanish, half in English. Otoya analyzed the data by culture
group (monocultural non-immigrants vs bicultural immigrants) and
by language (Spanish vs English). Only the analyses of memories from
before the eighth birthday reached statistical significance. For these
data, the mean age-at-memory was earlier for non-immigrants (mono-
culturals) than for immigrants (biculturals). Otoya interpreted this in
terms of the hypothesis of cultural and cognitive discontinuity
proposed by Schactel (1947) and later taken up by Neisser (1962),
according to which cultural schemata operative at the time of retrieval
must match those operative during encoding for retrieval to be suc-
cessful. Otoya suggests that the extensive changes in cultural schemata
involved in migration may render pre-migration memories inaccess-
ible or at least difficult to access.
In sum, Otoya’s free recall data show earlier memories from young
people who did not undergo childhood immigration than for those who
did experience childhood immigration. However, on the side of
caution, it should be pointed out that in the cuing procedure Otoya’s
findings were based on only six word cues and their translation equiv-
alents, which gives twelve memories per person. In free recall, each
person was asked to give three memories from before the eighth
birthday. Generating more memories in both procedures would have
increased the power of Otoya’s tests.

Third Paradigm: Narrative Recall

The final research paradigm is a narrative study that compares the
stories of an experience told twice, once in each language. Javier et al.
(1993) asked five individuals to tell ‘an interesting or dramatic life
experience . . . in the language in which the experience took place’
(p. 325). Later, after distractor tasks, the individuals were asked to
repeat the story in the other language. Descriptions were analyzed
according to ‘idea units’ and broader ‘thought units’ (adapted from
Chafe, 1980) and both language versions were compared.

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In the first monologue, the richness and level of elaboration of experience is

much more transparent, evoking a much higher level of imagery and
emotional texture that is unparalleled in the second monologue. Indeed, the
second monologue is rather terse and unimaginative, giving the experience
a concrete tone. (Javier et al., 1993, p. 328)
Again, these results must be taken cautiously since repeating a story
on the same day, in the same context (even if language is varied), lends
itself to abbreviation (by Grice’s Maxim of Quantity; see Grice, 1975).
Only five persons participated in the procedure, and choice of
language was not counterbalanced across participants. That is, the
results would be strengthened by asking additional bilinguals to report
an experience first in the language which they would not instinctively
prefer for the narration, to be followed by a later telling in the pre-
ferred language.

The Interpretations: Cognitive Formulations

Cued recall experiments suggest a significant effect of the bilingual’s
languages on autobiographical memory. In two experiments in which
younger bilinguals were asked to associate autobiographical memories
with cue words in either language, first-language cues activated
memories for events from earlier life than did cues in the second
language. Likewise, when older bilinguals identified the internal
language of their memories, first-language memories corresponded to
events from earlier in life than did second-language memories. The
cognitive literature presents two similar explanations for this phenom-
enon: encoding specificity and state-dependent learning.
The principle of encoding specificity (Tulving, 1983; Tulving &
Thompson, 1973) suggests that ‘recollection of an event, or certain
aspects of it, occurs if, and only if, properties of the trace of the event
are sufficiently similar to the properties of the retrieval situation’
(Tulving, 1983, p. 223). That is, applied to bilingual recollection: the
language of the cue matches some linguistic element in the autobio-
graphical memory trace. This need not imply exact wording. Referring
to the older bilinguals’ identification of the internal language of
retrieval, Schrauf and Rubin (1998) note: ‘the rhythm, body movement,
sound pattern at the phonetic level or prosodic, or some other aspect
of the language rather than exact wording or semantics, could be the
cause of the identification’ (p. 454).
A more global version of encoding specificity is state-dependent
learning (Weingartner, 1978). Here the notion is that the language
spoken at the time of the event, whether the event involved language
or not, is considered a cognitive state attendant on any information

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processing which took place at the time of the event. Marian and
Neisser (2000) phrase it thus:
Using a given language does not merely involve uttering certain words; it
creates a general mindset, a way of thinking, that is different from the
mindset that would go with a different language. These states of mind may
be quite distinct—as distinct as the ‘states’ that have been postulated to
explain ‘state-dependent memory.’
The Javier et al. (1993) narrative study is interesting in this regard
since it finds that the language of the experience (the language in which
the experience presumably took place) yields a richer, more elaborated
account when used to relate the memory. Again, congruity of language
at encoding and retrieval invites either or both of the above cognitive
formulations.

Case Illustrations in the Psychoanalytic Literature

I am afraid. I don’t want to talk German. I have the feeling that in talking
German I shall have to remember something that I wanted to forget. (Patient
to Greenson [1950, p. 19])
Issues of bilingualism assume an important place in psychoanalytic
theory and practice: first, because the treatment theory emphasizes the
retrieval and integration into the personality of material in memory
which is either forgotten or repressed; and, second, because the prin-
cipal access to this material is the linguistic articulation of memories,
thoughts, dreams, wishes, and so on, recovered in the context of the
‘talking cure’. The patient whose past took place in a different language
than the language in which therapy is conducted poses some unique
challenges.
The early history of psychoanalysis is replete with bilingual analyses
since many of the earliest practitioners and patients were themselves
bilingual and were analyzed and/or conducted analyses in second and
even third languages (Amati-Mehler, Argentieri, & Canestri, 1993;
Kelly-Laine, 1996). However, this period occasioned little explicit
reflection on the effects of multilingualism on therapeutic progress.
More recent discussions of the phenomenon divide into three periods.
Earliest treatments begin with Buxbaum’s ‘The Role of Second
Language in the Formation of Ego and Superego’ (1949), Greenson’s
‘The Mother Tongue and the Mother’ (1950) and Krapf’s ‘The Choice
of Language in Polyglot Psychoanalysis’ (1955). These discussions
form the point of departure for subsequent treatments of the topic. In
the 1970s Marcos and his associates published a number of articles
dealing with the issue of bilingual memory from both therapeutic and

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Culture & Psychology 6(4)

cognitive perspectives (Marcos, 1976; Marcos & Alpert, 1976; Marcos,

Eisma, & Guimon, 1977; Marcos & Urcuyo, 1979). Finally, recent years
have witnessed a number of publications concerning the topic, from
Amati-Mehler et al.’s book-length treatment The Babel of the Uncon-
scious: Mother Tongue and Foreign Tongue in the Analytic Dimension
(1993), to a number of journal articles, particularly by New York psy-
choanalysts Foster (1992, 1996a, 1996b, 1996c) and Javier (1982, 1995,
1996; Javier et al., 1993; Javier & Marcos, 1989) as well as others
(Movahedi, 1996; Urtubey, 1988). In addition, Du bilinguisme (Bennani,
1985) contains papers from a conference held at the Université de Rabat
(Morocco) in 1981.
Discussions in the literature often include case presentations that
furnish a simple outline of the presenting problem, some words about
the diagnosis, and descriptions of treatment with particular attention
paid to bilingual phenomena. These are not full clinical case histories
in the technical sense but rather illustrative summaries and examples
excerpted by therapists from their experience with bilingual clients.
Table 2 presents the demographic (where available) and bilingual data
for the 24 cases drawn from the literature.
The 15 women and nine men represented here are all adults, ranging
in age from 20 to 50. Three are simultaneous bilinguals, having learned
their ‘first’ and ‘second’ languages simultaneously in early childhood.
The remaining 21 are consecutive bilinguals who learned the second
language as a result of immigration in childhood or adulthood. Only
five individuals began therapy in their first languages, while 19 began
therapy in the second language.

The Behaviors: Language Shifts in Therapy

Of particular interest here are moments of language switching, because
changing the language of therapy is associated either with accessing
memories previously unavailable in the language used up to that
point, or with analytic transference, or both. Typically, therapy begins
in the second language and retrievals of forgotten or repressed,
emotionally charged material are made through brief visitations or
extended stays in the first language. The five general patterns of
language-switching behavior are summarized by the cases that illus-
trate them in Table 3. Examples from the cases themselves are provided
in the paragraphs that follow. The first three sequences display
dynamics directly concerned with the retrieval of autobiographical
memories; the last two concern more general behaviors which appear
in bilingual analysis.

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Table 2. Clinical case illustrations in the psychoanalytic literature

Source No. Patient Age Age at L1 L2a Language
immi- of
gration therapy
Buxbaum, 1949 1 ‘Anna’ [adult]b 16 Ger. Eng. L2
2 ‘Bertha’ 36 18 Ger. Eng. L2
Greenson, 1950 3 Woman 35 18 Ger. Eng. L2
Krapf, 1955 4 Man 48 18 Eng. Spa. L2
5 Man 28 [child] Por. Spa. L2
6 Woman 28 [simul]c Spa. Ger./Eng.L2
7 Woman 22 4 Ger. Spa. L1
8 Man 35 18 Ger. Spa./Eng.L1
Marcos, 1972 9 Woman 20 16 Spa. Eng. L2
Amati-Mehler et 10 Woman [adult] [adult] Spa. Ital. L2
al., 1993 11 Woman [adult] [adult] Spa. Ital. L2
12 Woman [adult] [adult] Eng. Ital. L2
13 Woman [adult] [adult] Cze. Ital. L2
14 Woman [adult] [adult] Eng. Ital. L2
15 Mr X. 50 ?d Por. Ital. L2
Javier, 1995 16 Woman 20 16 Spa. Eng. L1/L2
Javier, 1996 17 Man [adult] [simul] ? ? L2
Aragno & 18 Mr M. [adult] [simul] Spa. Eng. L2
Schlachet, 1996 19 Mrs S. 31 [adult] Ger. Eng. L2
20 Mr C. 40s [adult] Spa. Eng. L2
Foster, 1992 21 Woman 20 19 Spa. Eng. L2
Foster, 1996b 22 Woman 40 6 Spa. Eng. L1
Movahedi, 1996 23 Mr X. 21 17 Per. Eng. L1
24 Mr Y. 22 [adult] Per. Eng. L1
Notes:
a L2 may mean second and third languages.
b [brackets] indicate that numerical age was not given, but the case material clearly

suggested adulthood or childhood as indicated.

c [simul] indicates ‘simultaneous bilingual’, meaning that the person spoke both

languages from very early in childhood.

d ? indicates that the information was not provided and cannot be inferred from the text.

Type 1
The prototypical pattern is that of being unable to access painful or
traumatic material while speaking the second language and then
coming to a sudden and unexpected memory retrieval as a result of an
association with a word in the first language. Buxbaum (1949)
describes the case of a woman who is preoccupied with the penis and
who, by association with the word Blutwurst (blood sausage), suddenly
retrieves a childhood memory of a man exhibiting himself to her:

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Culture & Psychology 6(4)

Table 3. Clinical cases: Language shifts in therapy

Total cases Case references Character of the language shift
(page numbers)
Type 1 3 # 1 (283) A specific word in L1 triggers a particular
# 2 (284) memory, usually of intense emotional or
# 18 (26) anxiety-producing character, which was
previously unretrieved in L2
Type 2 6 # 3 (19) The global switch in therapeutic language from
# 4 (346) L2 to L1 facilitates abundant retrieval of
# 15 (133) memories from L1 associated with
# 19 (27) childhood/youth which were previously
# 20 (30) unavailable in L2
Type 3 6 # 6 (349) Memories which were previously available in
# 7 (353) L2 but in abbreviated form, or which were
# 9 (197) lacking in appropriate emotional
# 16 (435) accompaniment, are retrieved in detail and
# 17 (236) with intense emotional involvement when
# 23 (850) accessed in L1. Alternately, L2 is employed
tactically to maintain the stance of detached
observer from personal recollections; L2 serves
as the language of ‘experience-distant’ as
opposed to ‘experience-near’ description
Type 4 8 # 8 (355) L2 serves as the linguistic and cultural
# 10 (71) mediation of current conceptions of the self
# 11 (75) while simultaneously distancing past identity
# 12;13 (76) or the past self which is associated with L1 and
# 14 (77) the culture of childhood/youth
# 21 (69)
# 22 (251)
# 24 (854)
Type 5 1 # 5 (348) Emotional outbursts directed in the present at
the therapist take place in L1, which is not
spoken at any other time during therapy

‘What is that Blutwurst he has hanging there?’ (p. 283). Aragno and
Schlachet (1996) discuss a patient, abused in childhood, who reported
dreaming of a bear that threatened his current girlfriend. The dream is
uninterpretable until the man lights on the Spanish word oso (bear),
which was his nickname for his abusive father. His father, or more
accurately the memory of his father, comes between him and his girl-
friend. In both of these cases, an individual word in the first language
triggered a memory that had not been retrievable from the second
language.

Type 2
In contrast to the first pattern, where single words trigger or release
memories, a second pattern is marked by a global change of language

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Schrauf Bilingual Autobiographical Memory

in therapy, usually from the second language to the mother tongue.

Again, the result is the retrieval of many key memories that seemed
unavailable for as long as therapy was conducted in the second
language. In Greenson (1950), a German–English bilingual woman in
therapy in English reported having a dream in German, whereupon
the therapist encouraged her to switch to German in the therapy. Her
response is quoted at the head of this section: ‘I have the feeling that
in talking German I shall have to remember something that I wanted
to forget’ (p. 19). The shift in language occasioned her working through
her childhood relationship to her mother—an intractable issue until
that point. Therapy continued in German for three months, and
switched back again to English: ‘Only when specific resistances against
remembering or recapturing feelings about the mother occurred would
the analyst suggest the patient speak German’ (p. 20). In this case it is
not associations to an individual word or words that seem to be effec-
tive in motivating memory, rather it is the global use of the first
language which creates the conditions for effective retrieval of
numerous memories.

Type 3
In a third behavior, memories of past events are consciously recalled
in the second language but their recitation is lifeless, colorless and
emotionally flat. Retrieval in the first language, on the other hand,
seems to access the emotional content of these memories. Javier (1996)
relates the case of a young man who, speaking his second language,
presents a detached and distant picture of his father, but who, when
speaking in his first language, recalls many warm memories of his
father and eventually begins to process a certain rage against his father.
Retrieval of memories from the second language certainly occurs, but
their affective content and existential import seems blocked until they
are accessed in the first language.
In some cases, patients make strategic use (consciously or uncon-
sciously) of this dynamic by using the second language to maintain the
stance of detached observer from their experience. Movahedi (1997)
reports the instance of an Iranian college student who switched from
Persian (first language) to English while speaking of hemorrhoids
because the translation equivalent in Persian is used by adolescent
boys to refer to anal sex. In fact, he had dreamed recently of being
sodomized by an old teacher and his hemorrhoids had flared up. This
is not a case where switching language triggers memory, but it does
attest to the powerful association of language and experience. It
demonstrates the strategic ploy of taking refuge in one language to

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Culture & Psychology 6(4)

avoid the probable revelation in the other language of fearsome or

threatening material.

Type 4
A fourth category of language behavior in bilingual therapy is much
broader and often includes the previous types as component behav-
iors. This is the notion that speaking a second language, almost always
in conjunction with living in a different cultural environment than that
of one’s childhood and youth, has the potential of affording one a
different experience of the self. Foster (1992) reports her experience
with a 20-year-old dance student recently arrived from Chile and living
in New York City far from her family. Speaking only English has
become this woman’s defense: ‘The only way she has been able to
survive the eight months in this country is to be tough, to not speak
Spanish except when her family calls and to become “dura como un
gringo” (tough like a cold-hearted American)’ (p. 70). Here language
is used to buttress a defensive self-representation (cold-hearted
American). ‘In English, her second language, she is strong, brave, and
independent. In Spanish, she is her mother’s frightened, dependent
child’ (p. 70). Language may be used to condition a new and more
desirable self-image as well. This seems to be the case for the five
women described by Amati-Mehler et al. (1993). For these women, all
in therapy in Italian as a second language, a new cultural context and
a new language offered new resources for constructing an adult
feminine identity where previously this identity was imperiled or
problematic. Or as Krapf (1955) says of his multilingual patient: ‘by
slipping into English this patient denied his original “ego identity” and
passed into a new one’ (p. 355).
No matter how the concept is glossed, it is clear that some bilinguals
conceive of themselves as internally possessed of an alternate experi-
ence of the self. Consciously or unconsciously, a second language (and
second cultural matrix) can be used as resources in the construction of
a new or alternate self. Here again the issue is not so much that switch-
ing to the first language makes possible a cuing of memories unavail-
able in the second language; rather the issue concerns the larger
construct of ‘identity’, the ‘self’ or the ‘ego’, and includes instances of
resistance to retrievals in the first language.

Type 5
A final category, included here for the sake of completeness, is the case
described by Krapf (1955) of a Portuguese–Spanish bilingual in therapy
in Spanish, who, at tense moments, would revert to Portuguese and

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Schrauf Bilingual Autobiographical Memory

deliver a series of invectives at the therapist. The successful outcome

of therapy seemed not to depend in this case on switching to the
mother tongue, and the case simply illustrates once more the emotional
rootedness of the mother tongue.
These, then, are the more salient bilingual memory behaviors noted
in the psychoanalytic literature. This classification concentrates pri-
marily on the memory dynamics of psychotherapy, that is, on the fact
that some events from the past are consciously or unconsciously for-
gotten or repressed and subsequently retrieved in the special circum-
stances of analytic therapy, where they are integrated into an ongoing
narrative of self. There are other aspects of bilingual analysis which are
left aside in this discussion. For example, the crucial issue of transfer-
ence and counter-transference in therapy may bear globally on the
issue of retrieval but consideration of this dynamic here would blur
the focus on bilingual memory retrieval.
At the level of behaviors, it is evident that there is support for the
Mother Tongue Hypothesis. This seems to be the case when a word in
the first language or a global switch to the first language facilitates an
otherwise blocked retrieval, or when recall in the mother tongue
retrieves affective features of a memory which were previously
blocked. Nevertheless, there is also support for the Equal Access
Assumption, as when a bilingual consciously indicates or uncon-
sciously adverts to the presence in memory of material which he or she
leaves unaccessed from the second language. He or she, at some level,
is aware of the presence of the material, but, for whatever motive, finds
it difficult to access.

The Interpretations: Psychoanalytic Formulations

Interpretation of these behaviors involves key tenets of psychoanalytic
theory. Centrally implicated is the notion that unconscious infantile
and childhood psychic phenomena (i.e. ‘archaic’ psychic material) are
crucial to understanding later intra-psychic conflict. Foster (1996a)
comments on the early papers of Buxbaum, Greenson and Krapf:
Working from a classical drive/conflict model, they basically argued that
treatment in a non-native tongue avoids the early language of key fantasies
and memories. A second language offers the patient a ready defense system
for warding off old psychic structures, helping to repress feelings associated
with early life. (p. 245)
In short, the second language is an additional defense in the aid of
repression. Krapf (1955) said simply: ‘The common denominator of the
motivations that underlie the choice of language in polyglot psycho-
analysis is in general the tendency to avoid anxiety’ (p. 356). Of course,

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Culture & Psychology 6(4)

the strategy employed by the ego may not be wholly unconscious.

Greenson’s patient, quoted above, was aware that talking in her first
language (German) would lead to forgotten material, and chose not to
speak German.
Where memories are vaguely or incompletely accessed from a
second language (Type 3) or where a second language facilitates estab-
lishment of a new or alternate self (Type 4), the concept of splitting has
been invoked. ‘Splitting’ is a complex notion with different meanings
for different psychoanalytic theorists (Lichtenberg & Slap, 1973;
Perlow, 1995), and no summary is attempted here. Marcos and Alpert
(1976) used it to mean the ‘deflection of the emotional component of a
verbalized idea or experience’ (p. 1277). This would apply especially
to the third category of behavior discussed above: painful memories
may be recalled in the second language, but their emotional content is
separated off and only fully accessed when retrieval is repeated in the
first language. Javier interprets his two cases in the same sense: the
second language assists in the isolation of affect. In these cases split-
ting is a defense mechanism for dealing with anxiety.
Javier’s understanding of these behaviors (partial retrieval in a
second language marked by distanced or absent affective content) also
involves the notion of ‘state-dependent repression’. Here, ‘an experi-
ence, feeling, or wish occurring in the past may be inaccessible to
consciousness because the individual was in an altered state of con-
sciousness at the time of its occurrence’ (Jones, 1993, p. 87). Thus, Javier
interprets both of his cases in the same terms: the patient is aware of
the trauma but not aware of the extent of the affective response (iso-
lation of affect). Shifting the language facilitates fuller retrieval of the
memory (state-dependent repression). Such forgetting is not repression
proper (material blocked from consciousness by the ego) but rather lies
in a state of inaccessibility for lack of proper code (first language). In
any case, it functions to block retrieval.
Yet another possible explanation which does not invoke repression
proper is that proposed by Aragno and Schlachet (1996):
Very early experiences, embedded as they are in the global, undifferentiated
totality of a physiosensorimotor context of which the original language is an
integral part, are as yet insufficiently codified or symbolized to be repressed.
Nevertheless, the memories of such experiences themselves are accessible
and can be put into the words of another language, but these words are
devoid of associative triggers leading to the emotive soil in which the
affective roots of these memories lie. (p. 25)
In this case, words of the first language attendant on early experiences
are understood to be stored as imagistic features along with other

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Schrauf Bilingual Autobiographical Memory

phenomenal characteristics of the memories. Repeating those words

triggers the more extensive retrieval in much the way a photograph
might jog memory for details long forgotten. Indeed, this seems to be
a form of Javier’s state-dependent repression.
Splitting can also refer to the more pervasive ‘different experience’
of self referred to in the fifth category of bilingual behaviors. In an
extreme form, the splitting of the ego assisted by strategic employment
of a second language could suggest multiple personality. ‘A new
language offers an opportunity for the establishment of a new self-
portrait. This may supplant the old images or new images may co-exist
along with the old, which might lead to a kind of “multiple” person-
ality’ (Greenson, 1950, p. 21). Amati-Mehler et al. (1993) distinguish
splitting as a defense mechanism for separating off an object or the
affect associated with it, and splitting as a structural consequence of
conflict.
Movahedi (1996) offers a theory which does not appeal to repression
but rather suggests that the interweaving, indeed inextricability, of
cultural and linguistic elements makes telling one’s story in a second
language particularly problematic.
Telling one’s story in a second language, translating a particular piece of
psychic reality into the medium of a different social reality, robs the story of
much of its tight delusional grip. There is much tacit support for every
narrative in the collective sentiments and cultural memory of that particu-
lar linguistic community. Its translation into a second language strips the
story of much of its cultural support, the source of its zeitgeist authenticity.
(p. 845)
As Movahedi notes, this conception is dependent on Schactel’s (1947)
theory of childhood amnesia, which suggests that the cognitive
schemata of adulthood are incompatible with the cognitive schemata
of early childhood—an incongruity which renders childhood material
inaccessible. In the case of the bilingual (presumably consecutive bi-
linguals, i.e. immigrants), the schemata of the second language and
culture are incongruent with those of the first and render memories
stored in first-culture schemata inaccessible. Again, this is not a case of
repression proper, but a problem of the incommensurability of differ-
ent forms of mental organization.
In sum, psychotherapists reflecting on work with bilingual clients
suggest that memories are inaccessible either because of repression
proper or because of derivative forms of repression. Repression proper
may apply to certain memories in themselves or to the affective com-
ponents of certain memories (isolation of affect). As a defense mechan-
ism, repression makes use of a second language to assist in barring

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Culture & Psychology 6(4)

threatening material from consciousness. Derivative forms of repres-

sion are the following. A ‘state-dependent repression’ suggests that
material originally encoded in the first language is available to con-
sciousness but can only be accessed (fully) when the proper code (first
language) is employed. Alternately, very early memories may involve
the intimate integration of first-language elements with perceptual and
emotional elements, and retrieval of the integrated whole may require
first-language triggers. Finally, there is the possibility that the mental
schemata of second languages and cultures may be incongruent with
those of childhood, rendering retrievals from the latter jejune, sketchy
and lifeless, or simply inaccessible.

The Empirical Issue: Equal Access to Memories and

Mother Tongue Bias
Though they cast the issue differently, the experimental studies and
psychoanalytic cases suggest that the language of retrieval affects auto-
biographical recollection. Both support some version of the Mother
Tongue Hypothesis introduced at the beginning of this paper. The
experimental studies showed a preferential retrieval pattern for the
first language: either the mother tongue cued older memories, or
memories identified as having occurred internally in the mother
tongue were older than those cued or retrieved in the second language.
Therapeutic experience repeatedly shows that certain memories
simply were not retrieved, despite hints that they might exist, while
counseling was carried on in the second language.
Beyond the issue of the presence or absence of retrievals and the
pattern of retrieval, both the experiments and the clinical cases also
point to observable differences in quality of memory according to
language of retrieval. Analysis of narrative data in Javier et al. (1993)
revealed richer content and more elaboration when the language of the
narration matched that of the experience. Again, this is consistent with
the intuitions of the Mother Tongue Hypothesis: a person should
retrieve childhood memories in more detail and with more emotional
feel in the language spoken at childhood. Therapeutic experience
suggests that in some cases, memories retrieved in the second language
emerged in abbreviated form while affective content and existential
import were apparently subjectively unexperienced.
To some extent both experimenters and therapists concur on possible
explanations for these phenomena. When Aragno and Schlachet (1996)
say that language is part of the still undifferentiated physiosensori-
motor whole of childhood experience and hence available only to

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language-congruent retrieval, it is much the same as arguing for the

encoding specificity of experimental work which treats language as
one among many features of the memory trace and argues similarly
for language congruent retrieval. Javier (1995, 1996) employs the
notion of ‘state-dependent repression’ in much the same way as ‘state-
specific memory’ is used by Marian and Neisser (2000). In both cases,
language is a quality of a person’s state of consciousness or mental
organization or both, and when the linguistic character of the state of
retrieval matches the linguistic character of the state of encoding,
remembering is more detailed and ‘successful’.

Theoretical Reflections: Memory Filtered through

Cultural-Linguistic Self-Representations
That there is empirical support for differences in patterns and quality
of retrievals according to language raises the theoretical question of
why this should be so. Since both the experimental work and the
clinical case reports converge on the notions of ‘state-dependent
learning’ and ‘state-dependent repression’ as explanatory accounts,
some refinement of the ‘states’ in question may hold some promise. I
propose here a theory of linguistic effects on memory focused through
representations of the self.
Language as it has been glossed in this paper is a code, a practice
and an ideology. Again, in Bourdieu’s phrase, languages are embedded
practices. Acculturation—developing cultural competence—and
second-language learning—developing linguistic and communicative
competence—are interlinked processes (Schrauf, 2000) through which
an individual acquires the resources to construct and negotiate the
sociocultural world on the pattern of and in interaction with other
members of the culture. Children in a first culture and immigrants in
a second culture are engaged in myriads of contexts in which language
learning indexes and is indexed by cultural knowledge and practice.
Language serves as both tool and medium of socialization in the
respective cultures.
The representation of the self—how one presents oneself socially
(and reflexively as well)—is also linked to language as a medium and
as a resource. But the self is not unitary. ‘Selves’ or self-representations
are multiple and mediated through discourse. That the self is variable
has become a common theme in psychology and anthropology. From
a psychoanalytic perspective, there is talk of ‘constructed selves’ and
‘multiple self-representations’. Johnson (1998) makes the point that the
‘constructed self is a self-image that is compatible with social and

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Culture & Psychology 6(4)

cultural expectations’ (p. 310), suggesting that as expectations vary, so

might the self that is indexed to them. Ewing (1990) argues that the
notion of a coherent unified self is illusory and that persons have
multiple self-representations indexed and/or tapped according to
context:
People construct a series of self-representations that are based on selected
cultural concepts of person and selected ‘chains’ of personal memories. Each
self-concept is experienced as whole and continuous, with its own history
and memories that emerge in a specific context, to be replaced by another
self-representation when the context changes. (p. 253)
In this view, ‘chains’ of memories would seem to function somewhat
like a curriculum vitae for a specific self-representation. These are oral
life-stories, narrated selves (Ochs & Capps, 1996; Polkinghorne, 1991)
founded on memories layered on one another, each preserving the
social and cultural context of previous retrievals (Schrauf, 1997).
Research in experimental social psychology on the self suggests that
persons possess multiple self-schemata for multiple domains of experi-
ence and/or expertise, and such self-schemata are sensitive to the
encoding and retrieving of memories which confirm them—and to the
‘forgetting’ which disconfirms them (Markus, 1977, 1980). This
research also suggests that people have multiple ‘possible selves’
which motivate goal directed behavior (Markus & Nurius, 1986;
Markus & Ruvolo, 1989). Presumably, encoding and retrieval of infor-
mation about the self (including autobiographical memories) are
affected by possible, future, planned or idealized selves as well.
The notion that the self is multiple and multiply represented accord-
ing to context and goal is linked to the discourses or ‘languages’
through which self-representations are mediated. In fact, every indi-
vidual manages a multiplicity of discourses, through which particular
self-representations are mediated (e.g. respectful citizen to the roadside
police officer, macho male in the frat house, wary patient on the phone
with the HMO, etc.). The dynamic is the same in kind (though quite
different in degree) for bilingual individuals whose self-represen-
tations are linguistically constructed and socially mediated in different
cultural contexts. Particularly for the fluent consecutive bilinguals
mentioned in the beginning of this paper, the process of acculturation
mediated in part through second-language acquisition can involve
extensive psychological adjustments. For these individuals, the self-
representations elaborated during childhood were mediated under
quite different cultural-linguistic circumstances than self-represen-
tations in the present.
Recollection of the personal past is a behavior (like any other)

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conditioned by the self-representation activated in the current moment.

It is the self-representation currently operative that acts as a filter for
memories: confirmatory ones ‘remembered’, inconsistent ones ‘forgot-
ten’. Or, in cognitive terms, it is the self-representation currently oper-
ative that raises the activation level of that chain of personal memories
which undergird it and that inhibits those which contradict it (or
simply complicate it unduly). The language and cultural associations
conditioning the currently activated self-representation, whether that
representation is willingly employed or enforced by circumstance, may
conflict or concord with the language and cultural associations of past
self-representations in past events. Thus, retrieval is either facilitated
or inhibited by cultural or linguistic factors through the filter of the
currently activated self-representation.
This is wholly in accord with the encoding specificity and state-
dependent learning explanations in the experimental literature. As
such, language is of the very texture of remembering. When languages
match at encoding and at retrieval, remembering is more effective. This
congruity is established through the medium of the current self-
representation, indexed culturally and linguistically by present-tense
context.
Likewise, these notions are consistent with explanations of bilingual
patterns of forgetting in the psychoanalytic, clinical literature. These are
‘state-dependent repression’ or use-of-language as a defense mechan-
ism against anxiety-producing material in memory and splitting
(including isolation of affect). Each of these presumes a self-construct
in a present moment, a conscious effect of unconscious motivations,
that is incongruous with certain ‘memories’. Again, a specific language
element or cultural representation (or symbol) may be used as a trigger
when conditions favor ‘safer’ retrieval (therapy), but it is the thera-
peutic context and especially the self which there comes into being
which overcome the forgetting.

Conclusion
In studies of autobiographical memory, the fluent, consecutive bilin-
gual is a particularly interesting individual. Born in one place, she is
socialized into her culture of origin, in part through first-language
acquisition. At a later time, she moves to another place, and is social-
ized into another culture, in part through second-language acquisition.
Attaining cultural and communicative competence in a second culture
involves different ways of cognitively and affectively construing the
sociocultural environment and negotiating one’s place in it. Will her

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Culture & Psychology 6(4)

memory for the past be affected by these cognitive and affective adjust-
ments? Will the new software read the old files?
The examination of experimental studies suggests that memory is
affected, that bilinguals do in fact retrieve more memories for child-
hood and youth when remembering in the mother tongue. The
examination of clinical cases suggests more detailed and more
emotional retrievals from early life in the mother tongue. More seems
‘forgotten’ from childhood when remembering takes place in the
second language.
State-dependent learning is a powerful theory for explaining this
phenomenon, and the experimenters and psychoanalysts whose work
is reviewed here appeal to that explanation. Both suggest that language
as a qualitative state attends both encoding and retrieval, and that
matches and mis-matches between the language spoken at encoding
and retrieval explain the differences between retrieval in the mother
tongue and in the second language.
Nevertheless, the change in language alone may not be enough to
account for this phenomenon. A long research tradition in psychology
has examined bilingual memory at the level of words and lexemes.
Researchers have hypothesized multiple lexicons with diverse paths of
access to common conceptual and imagistic memory stores. These
models do not seem to address the experience of autobiographical
memory, in part because language is not a matter of finding translation
equivalents for common objects, and in part because recollection for
the personal past is more story-like, more the stuff of narrative. Simi-
larly, codeswitching in therapy is not an entirely neutral event. That is,
even given the bilingual fluency of the client, the choice of language
in therapy is strategic and consequential, though often unconscious. A
second language can act as a kind of fog obstructing the view of past
experiences.
There is more at issue in both experiment and therapeutic hour than
the effect of language on a particular cognitive process. At issue is the
self or the self-representation activated with that language. Again,
insofar as language is the medium and tool for the experience and
negotiation of the sociocultural environment, it is also the medium and
tool for the presentation and negotiation of the self. In part, then, it is
through language that culture and the self are co-constitutive of one
another. Cultural psychologists have explored the issue of how culture
and self are intimately interdependent (e.g. Kitayama, Markus, Mat-
sumoto, & Norasakkunkit, 1997; Miller, 1999; Shweder, 1991). To this
research I wish to add the notion that the particular language spoken
by a bilingual individual activates a corresponding cultural self, and

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Schrauf Bilingual Autobiographical Memory

in turn this culturally-linguistically specific self acts as a filter through

which personal memories are retrieved.
In the end, it all depends on which software you’re running.

Acknowledgements
Research and writing of this paper were supported by a National Institute of
Mental Health National Research Service Award (5F32MH11157–02) and by a
National Institute on Aging grant (1R01AG16340-01A1). I would like to thank
David C. Rubin of the Duke University Department of Experimental
Psychology for his comments and suggestions regarding earlier versions of
this manuscript.

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Biography
ROBERT W. SCHRAUF is a medical and psychological anthropologist at the
Buehler Center on Aging at Northwestern University. His research
investigates the effects of acculturation and second-language learning on
cognitive and affective processes. Specific projects have included the
organization of autobiographical memory by cultural schemata, the effects of
adult second-language acquisition on autobiographical memory of older
adults, the linguistic encoding and retrieval of memories of fluent bilinguals,
and the effects of migration during middle childhood on inner speech.
ADDRESS: Robert Schrauf, Buehler Center on Aging, 750 North Lake Shore
Ave, Suite 601, Chicago, Illinois, 60611–2611, USA. [email: [email protected]]

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