The Investigation of Working Memory in Monolinguals, Bilinguals and Trilinguals

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to figure out if there are any differences between monolinguals, bilinguals and trilinguals regarding their working memory capacity. This study was exposed fact in design and was a quantitative correlational study. For the purpose of this study, 90 Iranian participants were selected from different universities and foreign language institutes. For all monolingual samples Persian was their only language, for bilinguals Persian was their first language and Kurdish was their second language, and trilinguals were participants with the ability, in addition to Persian and Kurdish, to speak in English. The results of the three research questions indicated that monolinguals and bilinguals had no significant difference regarding their working memory capacity, the result was the same for monolinguals and trilinguals, but there was a significant difference between bilinguals and trilinguals in their working memory capacity.