Studies generally have shown that even when the IQ scores of the two groups are comparable, good readers perform better than poor readers with paired-associate (PA) learning tasks (Walters & Doan, 1962;Walters & Kosowki, 1963;Giebink & Goodsell, 1967; Otto, 1961, in press). However, when Cooper (1968) used a list of pictures of common objects paired to minimize associational bonds, she found no significant difference in good and poor readers' performance with the PA task. The explanation may be inherent in the fact that Cooper's list included pictures only, while the lists used in the other studies included words or word-like stimuli. The finding of Rohwer, Lynch, Levin, & Suzuki (1967) that third and sixth graders unselected as to reading ability learned more pairs when PA items were pictures rather than words provides some support for this notion: The general advantage derived from responding to pictures might be even greater for poor readers, who have every reason to respond negatively to words.The present study was done to determine whether verbal and pictorial presentations of items would differentially affect good and poor readers' performance with a PA task. The predictions were that (a) in general, good readers, fifth graders and Ss responding to pictorial items would make fewer errors in learning a PA list than poor readers, second graders, and Ss responding to verbal items, and (b) specifically, poor readers would make more errors than good readers with verbal items, but with pictorial items the performance of the two groups would not differ.Subjects and Design. The Ss were good and poor readers from grades two and five in a small city school system. The 10 teachers involved were asked to identify all of their pupils whom they judged to be (a) in the average (90-115) intelligence range, and (b) in the upper and lower thirds of their classes in reading achievement. The teacher judgments were checked against California Test of Mental Maturity IQ scores and reading subtest scores from the Stanford achievement battery, and pupils whose test scores were in accord with the teacher judgments were considered potential Ss. From this pool of Ss, equal numbers of boys and girls from each reading level and each grade were assigned to the two treatment groups. Thus, the design was a 2 by 2 by 2 factorial, the independent variables being grade (second and fifth), reading ability (good and poor), and treatment (verbal and pictorial lists). Six boys and six girls were assigned to each cell, for a total of 96 Ss.Materials and Procedure. The PA list included eight pairs of common objects-mop -cake, tree -hat, clock -house, fish -bed, cat -shoe, soap -fork, comb -glass, and cow -ball-which were .verbally or pictorially represented on 4 in. x 4 in. squares of poster board. The pictures were line drawings from a first grade workbook and the words were hand printed in lower-case letters.The Ss were tested individually. The cards were arranged in pairs and placed face down in a constant order to begin. The E said, "There a...
The idea that motor tasks involving a strong emphasis on use of exteroceptive sources of information would be more resistant to the detrimental effects of heavy physical work than tasks of a highly interoceptive nature was tested. The design also allowed testing of the specificity hypothesis that practice should be under performance conditions having a specific criterion. 40 women were randomly assigned to either a control or an experimental group and received 75 practice trials on a new two-handed tracking task over 4 consecutive days. The control group practiced under conditions of heavy interpolated work on the first 3 days with Day 3 representing the heavy-work criterion, while the experimental group did the same except for Day 2 when they performed a letter-cancelling task instead of work. The second criterion condition which had no exercise stress was given to both groups on Day 4. A step-up exercise, which included use of the arms, was used to induce stress so that a heart rate of approximately 180 beats/min. was obtained prior to each minute of continuous practice on the tracking task. The results were in general agreement with the view that physical work does not detrimentally affect learning of highly perceptual tasks. Although the lack of significant differentiation of performance with and without work did not allow a clear test of the specificity hypothesis, under the stress criterion, the results suggested that the hypothesis did not hold for the present situation.
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