New Experiment: The Vocab Quiz

Curious how good your vocabulary is? I just posted a new experiment that will tell you. There are 32 questions. At the end, you'll see your score and how it compares with others who have done the experiment. This should be a fairly hard test. I piloted it on around 40 people, and only a few managed to get all the questions right. Then I made it harder. You can find the experiment here.

What is the purpose of the experiment?

We are interested in why some people have better vocabularies than others. So before you take the test, you'll answer some questions about your background, such as your age, level of education, and birth order. The predictions for age and level of education are probably fairly obvious. The predictions for birth order are less clear. Some researchers would predict that eldest children will have better vocabularies (they spent more time with their parents and so got a jump start). Others would predict that the youngest would have better vocabularies (they had extra teachers in the home!). Still other researchers would argue that birth order (being the oldest or youngest, etc.) should have no effect on vocabulary, because they argue that pretty much nothing is affected by birth order.

We are particularly interested in people for whom English is a second language. What factors lead some people to easily acquire a second language and others not?

Take the Vocab Quiz.