QML - Week 2
Research methods
Research methods
Research process
Research context
Group activity
Instructions
Form groups of 4/6 students.
Come up with a research goal that can be achieved with empirical research.
It doesn’t have to be fancy, just something you are interested in.
Write your research question on a post-it.
Research axes
Exploratory (hypothesis generating)
What is the role of empathy in the L2 perceptual development of intonation?
➡️ Higher empathic individuals, in comparison with lower empathic individuals, appear to be more sensitive to intonation cues in the process of forming sound-meaning associations. (Casillas et al. 2023)
What is the relationship between spaces of language use, attitudes and self-reported proficiency in minorities languages?
➡️ With more spaces available to speakers, the relationship between attitudes and proficiency is weaker. (Hampton and Coretta 2024)
Corroboratory (hypothesis-testing)
More structured languages (with higher systematicity) are easier to learn.
Languages created by larger groups are easier to learn.
➡️ High systematicity was advantageous for learning, but learners did not benefit from partly or semi-structured languages.
➡️ Languages that evolved in big and small groups were equally learnable. (Raviv et al. 2021)
Descriptive
The phonetic inventory of Northern Tosk Albanian. (Coretta et al. 2022)
An accurate description of the distribution of reflexives and their antecedents in Yoruba, with an examination of the verbs which they co-occur with in terms of the valency classes of the verbs as well the semantic field into which the verbs can be categorized. (Atoyebi and Anyanwu 2020)
Explanatory
Regularization is a phenomenon in which languages gradually reduce variability along certain dimensions. We use an artificial language learning experiment to test whether constraints on working memory during learning or production contribute to regularization. (Keogh et al. 2024)
We examine a model of abstraction from exemplars in which (a) all heard exemplars are stored (though influenced by factors like attention, decay, and interference), and (b) for language use, these exemplars are restructured into multiple layers of abstraction. (Ambridge 2020)
Group activity
Instructions
Think about your chosen research goal. Which quadrant in the research axes coordinates do you think it belongs to?
Come to the board and place the post-it with your research question in the chosen quadrant.
Research objectives
Establish facts
Improve fit of framework to facts
Compare fit of frameworks to facts
Research objectives (examples)
Establish facts
Are more regular systems easier to learn? (Raviv et al. 2021)
Improve fit
Models of learning need to consider both a systematicity bias and a preference bias to fit empirical data. (Schumacher and Pierrehumbert 2021)
Compare fit
Dual-path vs obligatory decomposition models of lexical retrieval produce contrasting hypotheses. (Taft 2004)
Group activity
Instructions
Think about your chosen research goal. In which of the three research objectives does it fit?
Come to the board and place the post-it with your research question in the chose objective.