Open AccessThe Validity of the Probe-Latency Technique for Assessing Structure in Language
Author(s) -
George J. Suci,
Paul Ammon,
Peter J. Gamlin
Publication year - 1967
Publication title -
language and speech
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.713
H-Index - 52
eISSN - 1756-6053
pISSN - 0023-8309
DOI - 10.1177/002383096701000201
Subject(s) - psychology , latency (audio) , noun , linguistics , noun phrase , syntactic structure , verb , computer science , cognitive psychology , natural language processing , syntax , philosophy , telecommunications
The probe-latency technique for assessing how language is structured by a hearer was evaluated for children and adults against syntactic criteria and found to validly separate noun and verb phrases. The technique also appears sensitive to structural variations within phrases. Structure was found relatively invariant over changes in length and in meaningfulness for adults. Children showed structural change as a function of length of input. The findings regarding length and meaningfulness were regarded as very tentative due to large individual differences between subjects, especially with children, on all tasks.
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