Critique of Tincoff and Jusczyk - Essay Example

First, infants were shown simultaneously a side-by-side video image of both their mother and father. When audio of “mommy” and “daddy” were played while the result of which they looked was recorded. Second, to test if the infants just associated each sound with gender different photos of men and women interspersed with photos of their parents were shown and results monitored. The results of both experiments suggest that infants as early as 6-months can associate sound patterns with meaning which is significantly younger than previously held.

Strengths: 1) Reliability – A major strength of this experiment was that it had high reliability both internally, between the two experiments, but also externally, with work done on older children. This concept of reliability is critical in research as another scientist must be able to verify one’s results by doing the same experiment under similar conditions. Furthermore, the simplicity of the study design will facilitate other researchers’ being able to replicate the results in the future.

(Moses, 1986). 3) Sample Size – The sample size of infants used (n=24) was another strength of this paper. When comparing with similar works (Oviatt, 1980) this is a major increase in data points and therefore power. It is essential that a research paper have adequate power, in order to improve the likelihood of detecting a result which is statistically significant (Moses, 1986). No IRB would approve a paper without adequate power as a study with a low probability of detecting something is not worth pursuing and adds nothing to the scientific literature. 4) Use of Monolingual English Families – The study designer’s decision to use English speaking families was a wise decision as it helped reduce a major confounding factor for analysis.

Researchers should strive to reduce extraneous variables which might influence the variables being examined though it is worth remarking that no mention is made as to regional accent which has been suggested to be a critical influence on comprehension (Huttenlocher, 1974). 5) T-test – One strength of this study is it’s simple and yes or no approach to statistics. A t-test is used to compare two means (Moses, 1986). Though critics might argue that the infant’s degree of response or more complicated measures than yes or no would be better suited, the use of a t-test allows for a simple and clear finding to be reported.

Weaknesses: 1) Variability of Infant Development – One major weakness of this paper is that infant development is extremely variable and that it is unclear how generalizable these findings are in light of different rates of development. Furthermore, by necessity it uses 6-month old infants born on different days, therefore a child 3 weeks older (6 mo. 30 days) than his peers (6 mo. 1 day) might be compared producing a confounding variable. It is unclear if sound association is a reliable milestone of development to be examined at 6-months. 3) No Main effect – Another weakness of this experiment was the absence of a main effect.

In experimental design, a main effect is critical as it examines the effect of an independent variable on dependent ones in light of other independent experimental variables. Rather than just providing t-test data, an analysis of variance should have been performed which would given data on the statistical significance of the