Retention of semantic, syntactic, and language information by young bilingual children

Bilingual 5-year-olds (20) were read stories in English and Spanish. Using variants of the second sentence in each story, recognition memory was tested for semantic and syntactic information. The children were also asked to identify the language of the third sentence in each story. The data indicate that the children successfully coded and remembered sentences in terms of meaning but rapidly forgot details of syntactic form. Coding by language (Spanish or English) for the third sentence was forgotten if followed by material in the alternate language.