THE IMPACT OF TRILIGUALISM ON SUSTAINING ATTENTION: THE CASE OF IRANIAN TRILINGUALS

Abstract

In recent decades, multilingualism as an essential social and cultural norm has been the subject of extensive interest and attention all over the world. A significant number of experts have investigated multilingual individuals and societies from different perspectives to find out how multilingualism impacts on people's ability. However, multilingualism has been neglected in Iran in spite of the linguistic diversity that exists. The present study, in which 468 male and female trilinguals and monolinguals participated, attempts to enter a new arena in terms of multilinguals' abilities, ie attention span, and find out if there is any significant difference between tri- and monolingual participants in terms of their performance on the MAAS attention span test. Analyzing the collected data from the groups through the use of the attention span self reported test battery, it has been revealed that trilinguals outperformed monolinguals.