think aloud protocol

think aloud protocol (plural think aloud protocols)

1. A data-gathering method used in a variety of research areas in which a person or a group of people are asked to verbalise their thought processes as they do a specific task which are then recorded for further analysis.
   • 2000, Don Kiraly, A Social Constructivist Approach to Translator Education, St. Jerome Publishing, p. 1-2:

     [I]n analysing the think-aloud protocols produced by novice and expert translators while they performed translation tasks, I was working under the implicit assumption that by having subjects verbalize what they were thinking while translating, it would be possible to identify cognitive strategies as if they were fixed routines.

   • 2003, Fabio Alves, Triangulating Translation, John Benjamins Publishing Co, p. 124:

     [M]uch research has employed concurrent verbalisation, or think-aloud protocols (TAPs).

   • 2005, Francesca Bartrina, Training For The New Millennium, edited by Martha Tennent, John Benjamins Publishing Co, p. 181:

     [S]tudents might be interested in examining Think-Aloud Protocol (TAP) techniques and uses of the translator's verbalised self-commentary.

   • 2008, Candace Séguinot, Translator and Interpreter Training: Issues, Methods and Debates, edited by John Kearns, Continuum International Publishing Group, p. 5:

     [T]here are general or global strategies whose effects may not show up as decision points marked by pauses as opposed to more local strategies that show up in think-aloud protocols as the translator verbalizes the options he or she is considering.

• TAP (abbreviation)

• This term is commonly stylised both in title case and in lower case and either with or without a hyphen between think and aloud.

• think-aloud protocol

• talk aloud protocol