The experiment that I read was "Born First, Born Smarter". It was a study done by R. B. Zajonc and G. B. Markus in 1975. They planned to see why recent research had determined that the first-born child in a family related to certain characteristics. It was round that first-born children tend to be more verbally articulate, less impulsive, more active, better performers in school, more likely to go to college, and tend to have a greater need to achieve. It was also found that earlier-born children tend to score higher on tests of intelligence and aptitude than those born into the family later. One of the things researchers looked at was the different environments that a first-born and second-born enter into. The first born enters a world of just two adults. The second child's environment is significantly different because it enters a world of two adults and one young child. I believe this would have a big effect on the second child because he/she's parents will have to give attention to the first-born along with the second-born.Zajonc and Markus developed a theory to explain the relationship between birth order and intelligence. Their study was somewhat unusual because Zajonc and Markus never actually came into contact with any subjects, never observed any subjects, and never asked subjects to do anything. Instead of actually coming into contact with their subjects, Zajonc and Markus applied their theory to a set of data that had been gathered and published by other researchers, Belmont and Marolla. Belmont and Marolla gave 350,000 Dutch males a "Raven" test, which is similar to an I.Q. test. They found a strong relationship between the birth order of the men and their scores on the Raven test. The scores decreased as family size increased and also declined with birth order.Using the information provided by Belmont and Marolla, Zajonc and Markus proposed the theory that as family size increases, the average intellectual cl...
