Psychosocial factors strongly influence language learning and reading achievement for children. Evidence indicates a strong positive relationship between attitudes toward reading in the first (L1) and second or third languages (L2/L3) and subsequent reading achievement among multilinguals. Many studies of children learning to read demonstrate direct positive relationships between intrinsic motivation and reading achievement. Other studies have found that extrinsic motivation is the motivational facet that most predicts achievement. Researchers have begun to consider how the relationship between reading attitudes in one language might affect reading motivation and outcomes for another language. In this chapter we examine relevant theoretical frameworks of motivation and psychosocial factors that influence language learning and reading. Next, we present state-of-the-field findings regarding psychosocial factors related to reading achievement among multilingual children. We discuss how to reconcile contradictory findings and consider which features of language and context may be salient for predicting relationships. Finally, we make recommendations for future research and consider pedagogical implications.

The Cambridge Handbook of Childhood Multilingualism provides a state-of-the art view of the intra- and interdisciplinarity in linguistics, psychology, sociology, and education through a kaleidoscope of languages, countries, scholars, and cultures. The volume provides: (1) understanding that for most children multilingualism is the linguistic reality in which they grow; (2) an analysis of the effect of languages flowing from different sources, at different times and in different forms, on the uniqueness of child multilingualism processing beyond mono/bilingualism; (3) insights into diversity in the socialization of multilingual children; (4) elaboration of the triangulation of childhood, parenthood, and schooling as natural multilingualism-cultivating conditions motivated by internal and external forces; (5) an integrative approach to multilingual children’s development where the child at the center is cradled by multilingualism and languages, and (6) a focus on multilingualism as a capacity independent from mono/bilingualism. The different language typologies, in different countries and different continents, gathered in this volume tease out what is universal to childhood multilingualism as an agent of “new linguistic realities.”