research on test questions

[Ben Ambridge]

Hi Gerlind

I don't know if this is really what you're interested in but I think your
email highlights a real problem with most experimental child language
research - The experimenters are always asking children stupid questions
(e.g., What's Ernie doing to Bert?) that they know the answers to themselves
perfectly well (Tamming him!)

I don't know of any research that directly compares - for example - a
condition where (a) the main experimenter asks the question and (b) a naïve
second experimenter asks the question (you guys should run one!). Having
said that, you should get in touch with Danielle Matthews - I think her
studies may have a condition where the experimenter can/cannot see the
stimuli she is asking about.

I wanted to mention, though, two studies where we have deliberately tried to
avoid that problem (though again I'm not quite sure this is what you're
asking for)

First we did a study where we elicited wh-questions from children - the
child has to put a question to a "talking dog" toy - so we deliberately made
the questions ones to which neither the experimenter or child knew the
answer, so the child was forced to ask, and it made sense for her to do so!

Second - where possible rather than getting production data (e.g., what's
Ernie doing to Bert) I get kids to rate the acceptability of sentences
(e.g., how good is "Ernie's tamming Bert" on a 5-point smiley face rating
scale). Obviously this doesn't work well with young kids, and only lets you
test acceptability not whether they've acquired a construction, but it does
get around that (and other) problems with elicitation methods.

I'm not quite sure this is really what you wanted but hope you find it at
least slightly interesting, if nothing else!

Best wishes!
Ben




On 30/01/2009 11:05, "Hauser, Gerlind" <hauser at eva.mpg.de> wrote:

> 
> Hi everybody!
> 
> I am interested in research, especially experiments, on so-called
> "test questions" and test requests. By "test question" I mean
> questions (mostly from an adult to a child), where it is clear from
> context that the adult has the information he is asking for and thus
> asks in order to test the child's knowledge/memory or to simply
> interact with the child. Analogous there are also test requests, where
> the adult could perfectly take the object he is requesting also
> without the child's help.
> 
> I would be grateful for any suggestions,
> 
> Gerlind
> 
> --
> Gerlind Grosse PhD student at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
> Anthropology Deutscher Platz 6 04103 Leipzig
> Work: 0049 341 3550 407
> 
> > 

-- 
Dr Ben Ambridge
School of Psychology
University of Liverpool
Eleanor Rathbone Building
Bedford St South
Liverpool
L69 7ZA

Tel +44 151 794 1111
http://pcwww.liv.ac.uk/~ambridge/



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