Developmental changes in verbal responses to systematic variations in linguistic contexts contrast with the data reported in the syntagmaticparadigmatic shift studies. The present study indicates a protracted developmental shift extending from five years of age beyond nine years of age. Apparently the first priority is to create a linguistic context when none is given; once a linguistic context is realized, semantic-syntactic equivalences have priority, followed by differentiation and then integration.[*] We thank Diane Muma for her pilot studies in originally developing the tasks and for her ideas for analysing the response patterns over the eight replications of each context. We thank Southern Illinois University for producing Tables 2, 3 and 4.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.