Individual Differences in Language Skills Test Battery (IDLaS-EN)

What is IDLAS-EN?

IDLaS stands for “Individual Differences in Language Skills”, a research project investigating individual differences in language use and understanding among adult native speakers. By “language skills”, we don’t just mean the number of words someone knows, but also the way that we differ in our approaches to using and understanding language.

IDLaS-EN is a task battery, meaning that it contains many different tasks that measure different abilities or preferences. They capture six overarching constructs: word production, word comprehension, sentence production, sentence comprehension, linguistic experience, and domain-general abilities (primarily working memory and processing speed).

Future plans include the release of a flexibly adaptable task battery that can be used by other researchers for scientific studies. Researchers will be able to choose which tasks they’d like to use, with multiple different assessments for each category.

 

 

Current status

IDLaS-EN is currently in its first pilot stage. Piloting is being conducted online via Prolific.

If you are interested in being a participant in a future IDLaS-EN study, please fill in your information on our online questionnaire.

The initial subset of the customizable battery for researchers has a planned release of July 2024.

 

 

Scientific background

The task battery was initially developed for native speakers of Dutch (IDLaS-NL); this work was at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and funded by the Language in Interaction Consortium. The version for native speakers of German (IDLaS-DE) is currently in the data collection phase.

A selection of publications and pre-prints using the IDLaS batteries include:

Hintz, F., Kievit, R.A., McQueen, J. M., & Meyer, A. S. (in preparation). Investigating the principal dimensions of speaking and listening skills using a novel behavioral test battery.

Hintz, F., Shkaravska, O., Huijsmans, M., Voeteé, L., & Trilsbeek, P. (in preparation). IDLaS-NL–A platform for running customized studies on individual differences in language skills via the internet.

 

 

Contact

Dr. Kyla McConnell is the primary developer of IDLaS-EN and a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, where they also coordinate the Individual Differences Research Cluster.

Dr. Florian Hintz is the primary developer of IDLaS-NL and a research group leader at the University of Marburg.

Sandra Bethke is the primary developer of IDLaS-DE and a Ph.D. student at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

Prof. Dr. Antje Meyer is the director of the Psychology of Language Department at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and professor at Radboud University.