Abstract
Empirical disciplines have long distinguished between two types of evidence bearing on behavior: experimental evidence and naturalistic evidence. In behavioral biology, both types of evidence are routinely used. It is generally recognized that naturalistic evidence cannot be dispensed with, because there is no way to guarantee natural behavior in an experimental setting. An effort is always made, however, to control observation as carefully as is possible. Within cognitive psychology, naturalistic data are not well respected. They are used most extensively in social psychology and in studies of child language acquisition, where the spontaneous speech of a child may be recorded for later analysis. They are also used in at least one aspect of adult cognitive behavior: the study of errors of performance, with the greatest emphasis on language errors. These studies are generally not very well controlled. Because errors occur at such a low frequency, it is not feasible to record large chunks of naturally occurring speech and analyze them for errors. Researchers have used the less controlled method of listening for errors and then recording them (generally using pen and paper, but with tape recording in at least two cases). There are enough problems with this methodology so that many cognitive psychologists are skeptical of the results of any studies based on naturally occurring errors. It is my purpose here to review evidence showing that naturalistic speech-error data are reliable and replicable.
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Stemberger, J.P. (1992). The Reliability and Replicability of Naturalistic Speech Error Data. In: Baars, B.J. (eds) Experimental Slips and Human Error. Cognition and Language. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1164-3_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1164-3_8
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