What are the strengths and limitation of Baxter’s experiment?
After reading the extract from The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Woman Really Speak Different Languages? I found Baxter’s experiment very interesting. His experiment shows the linguistic behavior difference between boys and girls. Although his experiment has some strengths and values, there are also some limitations.
Researcher Judith Baxter made experiment among 14 to 15 year old school pupils. They have been told to imagine that they are survivors of a plane crash in the desert, equipped with various items scavenged from the wreckage, such as sunglasses, compass and first aid kit, and their task is to rank the items in order of importance for survival. They are separated into single-sex groups to do tasks and their conversations and discussion were recorded by Baxter.
The strength of the experiment is it shows the different ways of discussing between girls and boys. The experiment gives them a real life situation that doesn’t have a correct answer so that they can discuss more. It also shows that it is not easy to know whether girls are more competitive than boys or the opposite interpretation is require explaining linguistic behavior, because just by looking at the conversation, I cannot determine which group is girl and which is boy. But we can see that the two groups discuss very differently.
There are some limitations in this experiment. One of the limitations is the age of the students, because people talks differently at different ages. If this experiment is taking among the younger kids, their ways of talking can be more competitive, because kids are more aggressive. On the other hand, if it’s among adults or older kids, their conversation can be more cooperative because they can control their emotion more and they know how to collaborate with the others. Another limitation is the different personally between the students. Some students can be more competitive, some can be more cooperative, so that can also determine the way the conversation goes.