ACLC Researcher Sible Andringa has won the Albert Valdman Award
For outstanding publication in SSLA, with his article
8 april 2015
The Use of Native Speaker Norms in Critical Period Hypothesis Research
In critical period hypothesis (CPH) research, native speaker
(NS) norm groups have often been used to determine whether nonnative speakers
(NNSs) were able to score within the NS range of scores. One goal of this
article is to investigate what NS samples were used in previous CPH research.
The literature review shows that NS control groups tend to be small and highly
educated and that detailed background information is usually not provided.
Another goal of this article is to investigate how the NS norm group may affect
the incidence of nativelike performance by NNSs. To this end, 124 NSs and 118
NNSs of Dutch completed five comprehension tasks and a vocabulary task. On the
basis of mean scores and standard deviations, norms were determined for a
representative and a nonrepresentative (highly educated) subsample of NSs. Also,
separate norms were constructed for the high- and low-frequency items within a
task. Exact McNemar tests were used to establish that the incidence of
nativelike performance by NNSs was significantly higher if a representative
sample norm was used. The results also showed that, insofar as there were
effects of frequency, norms based on low-frequency test items tended to be more
inclusive. The results imply that the selection of NSs in CPH research deserves
more consideration than it has received in the past; they also suggest that NS
ceiling performance is potentially useful in determining nativelike performance.
