Digital Humanities Lab presents ‘Coloring Book’ app for linguistic research

Coloring Book app - Digital Humanities Lab
 

On 16 October the Digital Humanities Lab festively presented the very first fully self-built app. In the app, ‘Coloring Book’, participants fill in a coloring picture on their tablet following instructions, and thus allow linguists to research their language comprehension. The app was developed by Julian Gonggrijp at the request of linguists Manuela Pinto and Shalom Zuckerman.

Painting a picture

‘Coloring Book’ may be used in research on children and language acquisition, or adults and bilingualism. The researchers compose coloring pictures that are specifically aimed at their target groups. In advance they fill out their expectations about how they think the participants will color the picture.

A participant might get, for example, a coloring picture of a cat, and the instruction “the cat's fur is orange with red stripes”. The test person then fills in the picture and the researchers compare the data with their expectations. It is interesting to see if a participant, in this simple example, swaps the colors and thus makes a red cat with orange stripes. The collected data can be analysed by the researchers in many ways.

Advantages over research with questionnaires

Until now, experimental research on language comprehension was carried out by asking questions that participants could answer with 'Yes' or 'No'. Although this is a popular method, there are some disadvantages to it that are overcome by the new app:

  • Children sometimes have the tendency to answer every question with either 'Yes' or 'No'.
  • Some participants consider answering questions too much as a 'test'.
  • Languages are not always unambiguous, which might lead to unexpected interpretations by participants.

With ‘Coloring Book’ the answering of questions becomes like a game. Children especially won't feel like they are being tested so much. The instructions are clear and univocal, and the results are more controllable. Commissioners Manuela Pinto and Shalom Zuckerman will use the app in the first place to check the results from previously conducted research. In addition, they will apply for new grants for projects in which the app will be used.

Do you have a question for the Digital Humanities Lab?

Throughout the entire year, researchers can apply at the Digital Humanities Lab for tailor-made applications. Such an application need not be fully elaborated: the Lab can also provide advice about what might be the best ICT-solution to your research problem.

The Lab is not limited to linguistics: researchers from all disciplines in the Humanities are welcome. Currently the Lab is working on, for example, a tool for historical/genealogical research, in which family trees from the Early Modern age are automatically checked for inconsistencies.

Moreover, from 5 November onwards, the Lab offers 'walk-in' consultations every Wednesday (9h – 11h) and Thursday (15h – 16h), to which the staff of the Faculty of Humanities are invited. You are welcome at Muntstraat 2a, room 2.13A, for all your questions regarding ICT and research. The Lab's programmers, and coordinator and advisor Dr José de Kruif will be present during these hours.