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Group Design

The most basic experimental design involves two groups: the experimental group and the control group. The two groups are designed to be the same except for one difference— experimental manipulation. The experimental group gets the experimental manipulation—that is, the treatment or variable being tested—and the control group does not. Since experimental manipulation is the only difference between the experimental and control groups, we can be sure that any differences between...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 2, 2025

An Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effects of Ageing on Sentence Processing

An Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effects of Ageing on Sentence Processing

Published on: October 25, 2019

Capturing individual differences in sentence processing: How reliable is the self-paced reading task?

Felicity F Frinsel¹, Morten H Christiansen²

¹Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA. fff26@cornell.edu.

Behavior Research Methods

|February 21, 2024

Summary

The self-paced reading task reliably measures individual reading speed but not individual differences in relative clause processing. Further assessment of reliability and validity is needed for this task in individual differences research.

Keywords:

Difference score Individual differences Relative clauses Self-paced reading Split-half correlation Test–retest reliability

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Last Updated: Jul 2, 2025

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Area of Science:

Psycholinguistics
Cognitive Science
Computational Linguistics

Background:

Group-level comparisons have historically driven language processing research.
There is increasing interest in understanding individual differences in language processing.
The self-paced reading task is commonly used to study language processing.

Purpose of the Study:

To evaluate the reliability of the self-paced reading task for measuring individual differences in relative clause processing.
To determine if established group-level effects of relative clauses translate to reliable individual measures.
To explore the utility of the self-paced reading task for capturing individual variations in reading speed and sentence region processing.

Main Methods:

Replication of established group-level effects of object vs. subject relative clauses using the self-paced reading task.
Analysis of reliability using difference scores for the relative clause effect.
Assessment of within-individual correlations of reading times for different clause types.
Examination of individual differences in overall reading speed and specific sentence regions.

Main Results:

Group-level effects of relative clauses (object clauses harder than subject clauses) were replicated.
Reliability of the relative clause effect size was near zero due to high within-individual correlations.
The self-paced reading task reliably captured individual differences in overall reading speed.
Individual differences in specific sentence regions were reliably captured when clause types were analyzed separately.

Conclusions:

The self-paced reading task may not reliably measure individual differences in relative clause processing effects.
Reliable individual differences can be captured in overall reading speed and specific sentence regions.
Assessing the reliability and validity of specific sentence regions is crucial for using self-paced reading in individual differences research.