G) Experiments
Experiments:
- enable linguists to investigate in an artificial situation how subjects react when specific details (variables) are changed while everything else is kept constant
- results are clearly focused and easy to process and evaluate
- typically involve groups consisting of similar subjects (assigned randomly or shared equally according to relevant factors (gender, age, education, ...))
- require a statistically viable number of subjects
- materials: recording equipment, flashcards, a stopwatch, etc.; in many cases computers can do the job: randomising stimuli, displaying stimuli for timed periods, record subjects' reactions to them (e.g. Inquisit: http://www.millisecond.com/)
Possible experimental setups:
- two identical groups doing different tasks
- two identical groups doing the same task in different conditions
- two groups that differ in some specific way (e.g. age, gender, native/non-native speakers)
- one group doing two different tasks
- one group doing the same task in different conditions
Examples of linguistic experiments:
- Stroop test: http://www.millisecond.com/download/library/Stroop/default.aspx
- Self-paced reading: http://www.millisecond.com/download/library/v4/SelfPacedReading/SelfPacedReading.web
- Digit span: http://www.millisecond.com/download/samples/v3/DigitSpan/DigitSpan.web
- Lexical decision: http://www.millisecond.com/download/samples/v3/LexicalDecisionTask/LexicalDecisionTask.web
- Listening span: http://www.millisecond.com/download/library/v4/ListeningSpan/AutomatedLSPAN.web
- Grammatical reasoning: http://www.millisecond.com/download/library/v4/Baddeley/baddeley.web
Considerations in connection with experiments:
- inform subjects about purpose of experiment?
- difficulties in producing unambiguous, comparable stimuli
- order effects
- floor and ceiling effects
- practice and fatigue effects
- generalizability of results limited because situation is pared down to the bare minimum
- human subjects involve substantial unexplained variation
- subjects may feel inhibited; children may have too short an attention span
source: Wray & Bloomer (2006: chapter 12)
Huling pagbago: Huwebes, 2 Oktubre 2014, 2:14 PM