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task specificity of language

the theory, mainly associated with Noam Chomsky, that language use differs from other cognitive tasks in qualitative ways and makes use of components that are specific to this purpose. The theory accords with Chomsky’s ideas of autonomous syntax and intuited grammaticality but is incompatible with the approaches taken in functional grammar, cognitive grammar, or behaviorist accounts of language (see verbal behavior). See also modularity; species specificity of language.

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Psychology term of the day

December 23rd 2024

within-subjects design

within-subjects design

an experimental design in which the effects of treatments are seen through the comparison of scores of the same participant observed under all the treatment conditions. For example, teachers may want to give a pre- and postcourse survey of skills and attitudes to gauge how much both changed as a result of the course. Such a design could be analyzed with a dependent-samples t test, a within-subjects analysis of variance, or an analysis of covariance. Also called related-measures design; repeated measures design; within-groups design. Compare between-subjects design.