Among the founders of psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics, he is known for his contributions to social and cross-cultural psychology (intergroup attitudes, child-rearing values, and psychological consequences of living in multicultural societies), language education (the French immersion program), and bilingualism (measurement of language dominance, attitudes and motivation in second-language learning, and social, cognitive, and neuropsychological consequences of bilingualism).
Lambert received his undergraduate education at Brown University (1940–1947), where his studies were interrupted for 3 years of U.S. military service in the European Theatre of Operations.
[1][2] In 1954, Lambert took up a position in the Psychology Department at McGill University in Montreal, where he published nearly 200 journal articles, monographs, and books on the topic of bilingualism.
Led by Lambert, the researchers examined the reactions of Francophone and Anglophone participants as they listened to recordings of who they thought were monolingual French and English speakers.
This technique was developed by Lambert and termed the Matched-guise test, an experimental procedure meant to assess attitudes and identify stereotypes held toward the out-group.
The findings of this study showed that, contrary to the dominant view at the time, bilingual people outperformed monolinguals on nonverbal and verbal intelligence tests.
Lambert and Tucker's objective was to determine whether learning French would be beneficial for English-speaking children in Quebec's social and political context.
[1][2] Watching his children grow up to be fluently bilingual in a household in Montreal with an English-speaking father and a French-speaking mother is said to have sparked his interest in bilingualism-biculturalism.