Director: Wendy S. Francis, Ph.D., Professor

Location: Psychology Bldg. Room 209
Lab Phone: (915) 747-5521

In the Bilingual Cognition Lab, we conduct research using memory techniques to learn more about bilingual vocabulary access. We also use bilingual experiments to better understand the effects of language proficiency on memory, transfer of learning across languages, and memory processes that are difficult to isolate with a single language.

The research team includes graduate and undergraduate students. Through the history of the laboratory, established in 1999, the contributions of undergraduate students have been tremendous. Papers based on research conducted by undergraduate student collaborators have been published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, Memory, Memory & Cognition, and Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. In recent years, both graduate and undergraduate have made contributions that warranted their co-authorship on articles  in these journals and manuscripts in the pipeline.

The Bilingual Cognition Laboratory at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) is located in an ideal environment for bilingual research. The laboratory is located less than 1 mile from the U.S.-Mexico border and immediately adjacent Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. The city of El Paso and the university are Spanish-English bilingual environments, where bilingualism is the norm, and where residents have daily exposure to both languages on and off campus.