Sherlock Holmes and the strange case of the missing attribution: a historical note on "The Grandfather Passage"

Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research : JSLHR
Jamie Reilly, Jamie L Fisher

Abstract

In 1963, Charles Van Riper published "My Grandfather," a short reading passage that has evolved into a ubiquitous metric of reading ability and speech intelligibility. In this historical note, we describe several heretofore unacknowledged similarities between "The Grandfather Passage" (Darley, Aronson, & Brown, 1975) and a portion of The Valley of Fear (Conan Doyle, 1915/2006), the final novel of the Sherlock Holmes series. We also describe overlap between "My Grandfather" and "The Grandfather Passage." We contrasted propositions within The Valley of Fear to "My Grandfather" and "The Grandfather Passage." We also compared the respective text strings using the Turnitin antiplagiarism software application (iParadigms, 2011). "My Grandfather" and "The Grandfather Passage" are nearly identical passages with 88% string overlap. In addition, both passages show similarities with text from The Valley of Fear. Darley et al. (1975) did not acknowledge Van Riper (1963) as the original author of "The Grandfather Passage." In addition to this citation oversight, neither Darley et al. nor Van Riper attributed Conan Doyle as original source material. We describe the colorful history of this passage that has seen a remarkable breadth of utilit...Continue Reading

References

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Citations

Jul 23, 2013·Child Development·Giang Pham, Kathryn Kohnert
May 25, 2016·Journal of Communication Disorders·Christina Kuo, Kris Tjaden
Aug 1, 2012·American Journal of Speech-language Pathology·Rupal PatelScott Russell
Feb 15, 2017·Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research : JSLHR·Bryan GickIan Stavness
Dec 8, 2019·International Journal of Mental Health Nursing·Marianne SmithHenry Jeremy Bockholt
Aug 26, 2020·Quality of Life Research : an International Journal of Quality of Life Aspects of Treatment, Care and Rehabilitation·Noelle E CarlozziEmily Mower Provost
Jun 3, 2016·The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America·Kevin D RoonD H Whalen
Feb 3, 2018·Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research : JSLHR·Yeptain LeungSiew Pang Chan

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