A self-paced reading activity for introducing the garden-path effect
NOTE: Unfortunately, Alex Drummond's Ibex Farm shut down on September 30th, 2021. Ibex experiments may still be run using PCIbex Farm, though the interface is slightly different. Eventually, I will update this page with instructions for running this activity using PC Ibex farm; in the meantime, the experiment files should still be usable if you wish to try it out yourself.
In Fall 2020 I taught an undergraduate Introduction to Linguistics course, and during our unit on psycholinguistics we discussed the garden path effect and what it teaches us about how speakers process written sentences. Prior to introducing the garden path effect, I invited my students to complete an internet-based self-paced reading activity (really a short experiment) that featured stimuli from the self-paced reading study by Ferreira and Henderson (1990). After learning about the garden path effect, students were asked to discuss their experience completing the activity and predict what the results might be. We then visualized the students’ reading times, which indeed showed a slow-down at the disambiguation point in garden path sentences. Take a look at the visualization of the results.
I wanted to do this activity mainly to show that the garden path effect was real, but it was also a nice way to introduce some of the research methods that are used in psycholinguistics. It also works well if you're using Language Files as your textbook, because the sentence processing section of the Psycholinguistics chapter includes some discussion of the garden path effect. The experiment was run using Ibex Farm and I analyzed the data/visualized the results using R. Since the experiment was conducted completely online, I simply posted the link to the course page on our learning management system and asked students to complete it if they wanted (I didn't grade them at all for this).
If you want to do this activity yourself, you can import the experiment files directly to Ibex Farm. If you're using the old Ibex Farm, you can import the experiment files using the git import feature. Use git repo URL 'https://github.com/jweiric/GardenPath' with the branch/revision set to 'Files'. If you're using the new Ibex farm, simply download the experiment files and then drag and drop the main folder onto the folder icon next to the experiment name.
The R script that I used to analyze/visualize the results can be found here. Please feel free to use these files and modify them as you see fit. If something isn't working, PLEASE email/tweet at me and let me know. I'll feel very bad if someone can't do this activity because something isn't working.
Introduction to Ibex Tutorial
This tutorial provides a brief introduction to Alex Drummond's Internet Based Experiments (Ibex). Using a short acceptability judgement task as an example, the tutorial discusses the basic structure of an Ibex experiment and the data_includes file, and introduces key concepts like variables, controllers, and options. Common options for the Question and AcceptabilityJudgement controllers are explored. See the tutorial handout here.
NOTE: Unfortunately, Alex Drummond's Ibex Farm shut down on September 30th, 2021. Ibex experiments may still be run using PCIbex Farm, though the interface is slightly different. Eventually, I will update this page with instructions for running this activity using PC Ibex farm; in the meantime, the experiment files should still be usable if you wish to try it out yourself.
In Fall 2020 I taught an undergraduate Introduction to Linguistics course, and during our unit on psycholinguistics we discussed the garden path effect and what it teaches us about how speakers process written sentences. Prior to introducing the garden path effect, I invited my students to complete an internet-based self-paced reading activity (really a short experiment) that featured stimuli from the self-paced reading study by Ferreira and Henderson (1990). After learning about the garden path effect, students were asked to discuss their experience completing the activity and predict what the results might be. We then visualized the students’ reading times, which indeed showed a slow-down at the disambiguation point in garden path sentences. Take a look at the visualization of the results.
I wanted to do this activity mainly to show that the garden path effect was real, but it was also a nice way to introduce some of the research methods that are used in psycholinguistics. It also works well if you're using Language Files as your textbook, because the sentence processing section of the Psycholinguistics chapter includes some discussion of the garden path effect. The experiment was run using Ibex Farm and I analyzed the data/visualized the results using R. Since the experiment was conducted completely online, I simply posted the link to the course page on our learning management system and asked students to complete it if they wanted (I didn't grade them at all for this).
If you want to do this activity yourself, you can import the experiment files directly to Ibex Farm. If you're using the old Ibex Farm, you can import the experiment files using the git import feature. Use git repo URL 'https://github.com/jweiric/GardenPath' with the branch/revision set to 'Files'. If you're using the new Ibex farm, simply download the experiment files and then drag and drop the main folder onto the folder icon next to the experiment name.
The R script that I used to analyze/visualize the results can be found here. Please feel free to use these files and modify them as you see fit. If something isn't working, PLEASE email/tweet at me and let me know. I'll feel very bad if someone can't do this activity because something isn't working.
Introduction to Ibex Tutorial
This tutorial provides a brief introduction to Alex Drummond's Internet Based Experiments (Ibex). Using a short acceptability judgement task as an example, the tutorial discusses the basic structure of an Ibex experiment and the data_includes file, and introduces key concepts like variables, controllers, and options. Common options for the Question and AcceptabilityJudgement controllers are explored. See the tutorial handout here.