Effects of Birth Order and Multilingualism on Word Classification

Effects of Birth Order and Multilingualism on Word Classification

Psychology

Simrat Sandhu

2023

There are many factors which impact language development during childhood, which can in turn have a long-term effect on language in adulthood. This study explored whether two factors (participants’ birth order position and being mono- or multilingual) have an impact on language. We achieved this by investigating the persistence of participants in a language task – specifically, the classification of real words and non-words – using response times. We concluded that neither birth order nor multilingualism led to significant differences in persistence, whereas for word type, response times for real words were significantly less than pseudo-words (which is common across word classification research). Interestingly, additional analyses did show a significant main effect of birth order when the specific number of languages participants spoke, and English as a first language, were considered alongside our factors. These exploratory findings led to future research possibilities – both in language development and language-based task persistence in psychology.