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Old and new ways not to study comprehension: comments on Petretic & Tweney's (1977) experimental review of Shipley, Smith & Gleitman (1969)*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Lila R. Gleitman ,
Elizabeth F. Shipley  and
Carlota Smith
Lila R. Gleitman
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Elizabeth F. Shipley
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Carlota Smith
Affiliation:
University of Texas
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Abstract

This paper rebuts a recent article in this journal (Petretic & Tweney 1977), which claimed to overthrow prior findings of ours. We show that subject populations, methods, and scoring procedures differed materially in the two studies, logically disallowing comparative interpretation of them. We demonstrate that the original study concerned syntactic organization; and that interpretation of it, or of the recent study, as bearing on comprehension is largely unjustified. Finally, we comment on our prior work in the context of new developments and findings about child language which postdate its publication in 1969.

Type
Notes and Discussion
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , October 1978 , pp. 501 - 519
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

REFERENCES

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