Running head: ARTICLE CRITIQUE 1

Article Critique

Anonymous Student

Anonymous University
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Introduction

The effect of linguistic tendencies on behaviors is an interesting field for research; it

would effectively aid in the process of creating teams and maintaining them. A lot of research

had been done in this domain to determine the particularities of these effects; however, this

article poises an interesting addition to such research. The article was penned by Dong, Sarkar,

Yang, and Honda (2013) and it aims to describe the decision-making processes of an engineering

committee based upon their verbal tendencies. This article is relevant to the game development

industry as it presents several relevant points regarding decision-making, which in its turn is an

important part of team dynamics.

Specific Findings

Design

The article consists of five different sections: an introduction, a mathematical model, a

language model, experimental results, and a discussion section. The authors approach this

subject matter through mathematical calculations and linguistic studies in order to simulate the

specific findings they are aiming to achieve. The mathematical variables in the study represent

the instances where team members in the committee change to alternative decisions based upon

verbal feedback from managers or peers. The authors furthermore based all of their calculations

on previous conducted research that supports their thesis. In the linguistic section of the study,

the authors describe what they refer to as the semantic resources of the “system of appraisal” that

affects decision-making among other behaviors. Then, the authors associate a value to each of

those semantic resources and integrate them in the previous mathematical calculations. Finally,

questionnaires were distributed amongst participating individuals to study the viability of their

calculations.
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Results

The results of the study show that members of a specific team or committee may alter

their original decisions to other alternative options based upon positive or negative appraisal in

regards to these decisions. The authors argue that such results mirrored the probabilities that

resulted from their mathematical calculations. Although the authors viewed the results favorably,

the authors did mention in their discussion section that there has been some inconsistencies in the

responses for verbal appraisal, however, these fluctuations were acceptable to the authors as the

experiment wasn’t conducted in a real-world environment. There results were backed by

numerous tables that link the mathematical calculations to the received responses, while other

research had been cited to further support these findings.

Strengths

The article is information heavy and is remarkably well-designed and is laid out in a

cohesive and professional manner. Since the article is information heavy, the authors have

written the article in a way that is easy for different people to understand. The authors explained

all of their points while providing sufficient data and research to back all of their claims. Another

great aspect of the article is that the authors explained their mathematical calculations along the

way so that even if readers are not very knowledgeable in mathematics, they can easily follow up

and understand what is presented to them and not get disheartened by the complex calculations.

Limitations

Although the study succeeded in achieving several of the intended results, limitations do

exist which threaten the validity of the article findings. First of all, external validity is threatened

in the form of interaction of selection with treatment, which means that there these findings are

not likely to generalize to other people or populations. According to the authors, the study
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utilized a very small sample of participants who were English speaking. Thus, it might be

difficult to generalize the findings to other teams and committees that might speak a different

language or respond differently to what they hear.

The second limitation is a threat to internal validity in the form of testing. This threat

results when the administration of the measurement instrument (i.e. test) inadvertently

influences the subsequent responses. When participants respond to measures, they can actually

get some practice depending on the variable. And when surveys or questionnaires are long or

there are numerous surveys to complete, the participant may become tired or bored, resulting in

bias and/or random error. According to the authors, five questionnaires were administered to

participants and each of them required 10 minutes to be completed. This resulted in nearly an

hour of testing per person. Some participants may even have improved in their accuracy just due

to the practice effect. Certainly some participants were likely fatigued and even annoyed,

resulting in less attention, guessing, and even randomly completing some items in order to get

finished. This can be controlled by providing training to the participants as to the importance of

their sticking to it. Providing breaks can also help.

Conclusion

The study was an interesting and revealing read; it presented valid points of research and

debates that would definitely benefit contemporary organizations. The article was well-written

and well-balanced and provided appropriate and sufficient supporting evidence to back the

presented points. The article is particularly relevant in industries where teams are most

prominent such as the gaming industry. Furthermore, the article is very helpful in the upcoming

research as cultural behaviors affect team dynamics and culture and thus it could present

supporting evidence to what is going to be discussed in the future.

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Reference

Dong, A., Sarkar, S., Yang, M., & Honda, T. (2014). A linguistic approach to assess the

dynamics of design team preference in concept selection. Research in Engineering

Design, 25(1), 75-92. doi:10.1007/s00163-013-0165-1