Influence of thermal stress and language in memory tasks among French-Creole bilinguals

This study examines the effects of the presence or absence of thermal stress and language (French vs. Creole) on performance in memory tasks, recognition, and alphabetical ordering of previously learned words. Sixty-four French-Creole bilingual participants conducted two test sessions either in the absence (24 °C) or in the presence (31 °C) of thermal stress. The A and B versions of the tests of each session were either in French or in Creole. The results show an effect of climate, language and complexity of the task on memory and recognition performance. In fact, the performances in the tests were lower under heat stress condition than in the absence of the latter. In addition, the performances of the participants in the Creole language were superior to those obtained in French, under heat stress condition, whereas no difference was observed in the absence of this condition. Language is likely to modulate the influence of climate on memorization.