Developing a meaningful account of the acquisition of the English past tense Ref: RES-062-23-3062 Principal Investigator: Dr. Anna Theakston, University of Manchester Co-Investigator: Dr. Anna Woollams, University of Manchester OVERVIEW The aim of this study was to compare children’s performance in producing English past tense inflections across two different tasks. In the first task, children were presented with the progressive form of a verb (e.g. jumping) and asked to produce the past tense form (i.e. jumped). In the second task, children watched an animation and were asked to describe what had happened, thus they were not given the progressive form of the target verb. Two tasks were used because we had reason to believe that error rates might vary according to task, with children being more likely to produce a certain kind of error (overregularisation error, e.g. go-ed) when presented with the progressive verb form. We created a standard picture task to elicit around 300 English verbs, and an animation task for around 120 English verbs. Approx. 900 children aged 2;6-5;5 years participated in the study across the two tasks. Our results demonstrate that the rate at which children produce correct and error responses varies as a function of their age, the verb, and the task, reflecting different routes to access or generate past tense forms as a function of context. THE FILES Four files have been uploaded, in addition to this ReadMe document. 1. Past.tense.data.xlsx This excel spreadsheet contains 5 worksheets explaining the nature of the tasks, the participant details, the coding scheme used for responses, and the summary data by verb for each of the two tasks: Task details – this worksheet explains the two tasks that were used to elicit past tense forms from the children. Information is provided about the number of verbs elicited per task, the number of items completed per child, and the script used to elicit verbs from the children. Participant info – this worksheet contains details of the participants for each task, the number, their age range and mean age, and gender. Responses key – this worksheet explains how the children’s verb responses were coded, with examples. Data Inflection from Form – this worksheet contains the data for the inflection from form task. Each verb that was elicited is listed separately, organised according to whether the verb requires a regular (add –ed) or irregular (e.g. go-went) past tense form. Data are presented by verb for each of the three age groups. The data show the total number of children who attempted that verb, and the mean proportion of responses that were (a) correct, (b) uninflected, (c) overregularised (OR). Row and column headings are self-explanatory. Data Inflection from Meaning – this worksheet contains the data for the inflection from meaning task. Each verb that was elicited is listed separately, organised according to whether the verb requires a regular (add –ed) or irregular (e.g. go-went) past tense form. Data are presented by verb for each of the three age groups. The data show the total number of children who attempted that verb, and the mean proportion of responses that were (a) correct, (b) uninflected, (c) overregularised (OR). Row and column headings are self-explanatory. 2. Parent information sheet.pdf This document is the information sheet provided to parents prior to giving consent for their child to participate in the study. 3. Opt in consent form.pdf This is an example of the consent form parents filled in to allow their child to take part in the study. The use of an opt-in vs. opt-out consent form was determined by the head teacher or nursery manager of the school or nursery where testing took place. 4. Opt out consent form.pdf This is an example of the consent form parents could fill in to indicate if they did NOT want their child to take part in the study. The use of an opt-in vs. opt-out consent form was determined by the head teacher or nursery manager of the school or nursery where testing took place. POTENTIAL USES OF THE DATA The data can be used to: * Compare individual children’s performance on particular verbs against the average performance for their age group (although it should be born in mind that these data are not standardised across the population, nor are they from a large cohort of the population, and so comparisons should be made with caution). * Select verbs for future studies and/or assessments to systematically vary according to how accurately they are produced by children in a certain age group, or to identify verbs where performance improves/does not improve markedly with age. * Compare verbs where the context of elicitation (task) makes a large difference to children’s performance, and use this information to inform assessments of children’s language ability.