Interrelations in Children's Learning of Verbal and Pictorial Paired Associates1

Abstract

Four short paired-associate'tasks were administered to 144 subjects a t each of grades 3 and 6 and u2 subjects a t grade 9.tasks, e n t i t l e d Pictures, Concrete Words, Abstract Words, and JapaneseThe four Characters, contained response elements of the types indicated i n t h e i r t i t l e s . Planned camparisons i n mew l e v e l of performance involved t h e f i r s t three tasks. .Performance on Pictures was found to be superior -to Concrete Words, and Concrete Words was superior t o Abstract Words, w i t h the former e f f e c t reaching significance for grades 3 and 9 and t h e l a t t e r for grades 3 and 6. a l l four tasks, the correlation between Pictures and Concrete Words w a s found t o increase across grade levels t o a greater degree than the correlation between any other p a i r of tasks. This last result w a s paralleled i n data from an auxiliary experiment and w a s interpreted t o suggest a developmental increase i n children's use of verbal processes along w i t h imagery t o l e a r n p i c t o r i a l l y presented materials. This v a r i a t i o n has been effected i n two major ways, both generally i n connection w i t h a paired-associate learning format. of investigations, t h e learning of problems employing concrete nouns has been compared with performance on t a s k s using p i c t o r i a l represent a t i o n s of those nouns. Another s e t of studies has contrasted the l e a r n i n g of a b s t r a c t and concrete verbal materials-that is, words which d i f f e r i n t h e extent t o which they can be represented p i c t o r i a l l y .I n general, t h i s research has shown t h a t children l e a r n associations more e a s i l y when p i c t u r e s r a t h e r than words a r e used (e.g., Rohwer, 1968;Rohwer, Lynch, Levin t i Suzuki, 1967) and, i n the case of' verbal materials, when the words a r e concrete r a t h e r than a b s t r a c t (e.g., Paivio & Yuille, I n one s e r i e s 1966).Although it i s generally agreed t h a t v i s u a l imagery plays a t l e a s t some r o l e i n producing these e f f e c t s , the nature of t h i s r o l e remains l a r g e l y undetermined on the basiis of the simple Lntertask comparisons which have been performed. The f a c t t h a t p i c t u r e s a r e e a s i e r t o l e a r n than words, f o r example, can be i n t e r p r e t e d i n e i t h e r of two ways. It is possible t h a t p i c t o r i a l and verbal associations are learned by e s s e n t i a l l y d i f f e r e n t means, perhaps through imagery on the one hand and verbal memory on the other, and t h a t the f'orner is t h a t high correlations observed across d i f f e r e n t tasks indicate a s h i l a r i t y i n the processes used t o l e a r n them, while lower correlations suggest the operation of r e l a t i v e l y dissimilar processes. A basic assumption of t h i s approach, as hasThe current study w a s designed t o provide evidence bearing on the functional s i m i l a r i t y f o r children of various verbal and p i c t o r i a ltasks, throug...

Sectional Drawings From Science Textbooks: An Experimental Investigation Into Pupils' Understanding

“…Explanations offered to account for the progress which children make in picture interpretation can be conveniently divided into those which relate to general development, such as cognition (Beagles-Roos and Greenfield, 1979), language (Hale, 1971), or psycho-motor skills (Nesbit, 1981), and those which postulate abilities that are specific to the process of picture interpretation. In this latter category is the somewhat contentious theory that some advances can be attributed to learning of pictorial conventions (Gombrich, 1965; Nicholson and Seddon, 1977;Luczoz, 1982).…”