Experimenter identity: An invisible, lurking variable in developmental research

Abstract

Developmental researchers are well aware that children behave differently around different people. Nevertheless, researchers rarely consider (and report on) who is running their studies. Indeed, in a survey of articles published in the last 3 years in 4 top developmental journals, we find that the vast majority of studies fail to report any information about experimenter identity, despite the fact that child–adult interactions may be strongly influenced by the social inferences that individuals draw from one another. We argue that developmental researchers need to acknowledge how experimenter identity could be acting as an invisible, lurking variable, influencing the outcome and generalizability of studies. We provide simple suggestions for how researchers and journals can begin to address this issue, thereby improving the quality and depth of the work in our field.

Vocabulary skills of bilingual children: The evidence for context‐dependent performance

“…Experimenter characteristics are often overlooked in developmental studies (St. Pierre et al, 2022), in this study we took into consideration the native language and by default the ethnicity of the experimenter as one of the variables in our study that proved to influence the vocabulary production. This was also true when we recoded the T A B L E 1 Main findings and implications for research and practice.…”

“…Interlocutor characteristics such as race (Anzures et al, 2010) and language (Kinzler, 2013), have the potential to influence the participants' behavior, especially in developmental studies, where experimenters have an active role interacting with the participants (for a review see St. Pierre et al, 2022).…”

“…The notion that interlocutors have an influence is not a recent observation, a study (Mackey, 1972) in a bilingual school showed the children always chose the language that they thought was stronger in the addressee. St. Pierre et al (2022) argue the importance of taking into consideration the experimenter's identity, such as the native language spoken by the experimenter, as a variable that has the potential to influence children's performance.…”

“…Interlocutor characteristics such as race (Anzures et al, 2010) and language (Kinzler, 2013), have the potential to influence the participants' behavior, especially in developmental studies, where experimenters have an active role interacting with the participants (for a review see St. Pierre et al, 2022). The notion that interlocutors have an influence is not a recent observation, a study (Mackey, 1972) in a bilingual school showed the children always chose the language that they thought was stronger in the addressee.…”

“…This sensitivity to the interlocutor occurs in children about 2 years of age at the earliest (Genesee et al, 1995; Paradis & Nicoladis, 2007), and is defined as the child's capability to use his or her language in reference to their interlocutor's choice of language. Even thought, the characteristic of the researcher (i.e., race, ethnicity, language) may pose an influence as noted in a recent study (St. Pierre et al, 2022) there is a need for more studies to include this in their analysis. Given the sensitivity to the interlocutor that children show from a very young age, it is important to include the conversational partner as part of the contextual factors that may show experimenter‐effect or interference on vocabulary production when we maintain the experimenter's language as a constant.…”