Linguistic Experiment

Interactive Language Processing Lab at Stanford

In the following experiment, you'll see a series of visual cues and be asked to answer some questions about them. The HIT should take ~12 minutes. Please pay attention, and answer carefully. Thank you!

LEGAL INFORMATION:
We invite you to participate in a research study on language production and comprehension. Your experimenter will ask you to do a linguistic task such as reading sentences or words, naming pictures or describing scenes, making up sentences of your own, or participating in a simple language game.

There are no risks or benefits of any kind involved in this study.

You will be paid for your participation at the posted rate.

If you have read this form and have decided to participate in this experiment, please understand your participation is voluntary and you have the right to withdraw your consent or discontinue participation at any time without penalty or loss of benefits to which you are otherwise entitled. You have the right to refuse to do particular tasks. Your individual privacy will be maintained in all published and written data resulting from the study. You may print this form for your records.

CONTACT INFORMATION:
If you have any questions, concerns or complaints about this research study, its procedures, risks and benefits, you should contact the Protocol Director Meghan Sumner (650) 723-4284.

If you are not satisfied with how this study is being conducted, or if you have any concerns, complaints, or general questions about the research or your rights as a participant, please contact the Stanford Institutional Review Board (IRB) to speak to someone independent of the research team at (650)-723-2480 or toll free at 1-866-680-2906. You can also write to the Stanford IRB, Stanford University, 3000 El Camino Real, Five Palo Alto Square, 4th Floor, Palo Alto, CA 94306 USA.

If you agree to participate, please proceed to the study tasks.

Instructions

On the following pages, you will see a series of scenes with a customer and an airline representative, along with a map of the seats that only the representative can see:

Here is the airline representative. Today she is having a particularly bad day, and is feeling pessimistic and unhelpful.

This airline provides customers with two options: either they can pay $50 for a seat assignment or they get a seat assigned at random.

The following scenes show the customer asking the representative about their possible seat assignment, to determine how likely it is that they'll get their preferred seat without paying.

After looking carefully at the seat map, rate how likely you think it is that the representative would respond with one of two possible sentences. If you think both options are unlikely, you can respond with a third option, “something else”.

To rate the sentences you will need to distribute the sliders so that they add up to 100 points. If you move the sliders so that the ranking totals above 100, then the slider will be pulled back to its original place. Let's look at an example!

The following is a practice item.

How likely is the airline representative to respond with any of the responses below? Remember, she's in a terrible mood!

How likely do you think is it that the representative will respond with each of the following sentences?

Please make sure that the three ratings sum to 100!

Right, she probably won't be very helpful!

Hmmm... that doesn't really match the representative's mood. Try again!

{}
{}
*something else*

Great! Now we're ready to begin the experiment.

Consider the following scene:

How likely do you think it is that the pessimistic representative will respond with each of the following sentences?

Please make sure that the three ratings sum to 100!

{}
{}
*something else*

Additional information

Answering these questions is optional, but will help us understand your answers.

Did you read the instructions and do you think you did the HIT correctly?

No Yes I was confused

Were there any problems or bugs in the experiment?

What do you think is a fair price for the work you did?

Age:

Native Language:

(the language(s) spoken at home when you were a child)

Other Languages:

(other languages that you learned at some point in your life)

Did you enjoy the hit?

We would be interested in any comments you have about this experiment. Please type them here:

Thanks for your time!