Qualitative analysis of vocabulary responses from persons aged six to sixty-six plus.

Abstract

The verbatim definitions of the words contained in the Stanford-Binet (Form L-M) vocabulary subtest from subjects ranging in age from six years to advanced old age were subjected to qualitative analysis. The findings were that synonyms increased in frequency through childhood and were the predominant form of response throughout adulthood, that use and description forms were rare but were somewhat more common in the youngest subjects, that explanations were slightly more frequent in the adult years, that demonstration and illustration forms were rare and indicated no age trend, and that errors decreased through the childhood and adolescent years. These findings are discussed in terms of the value of such qualitative analyses and in consideration of the distinction between ontogenetic and cohort changes. 1 The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance of Erwin S. Huston and Norman C. Storck in making available the subject sample. Appreciation is also extended to Elva Herbst, Lynn Matthews, and Nancy Pecheriza for their considerable help in public relations in this project, to Lydia B. Storck and Lawrence Hubert for their assistance in the data analysis, and to the 180 persons who made themselves available for our work.2 Requests for reprints should be sent to Patricia

The development of noun definition

“…For example, both Wolman & Barker (1965) and Swartz & Hall (1972) found that definitions given by children aged four to nine years focused on the function of an object, whereas older children and adolescents gave descriptive or abstract definitions. In contrast, both Storck & Looft (1973) and Wilson (1975) found that children as young as six gave abstract definitions (e.g. synonyms) more frequently than functional definitions.…”

The development of noun definitions: a metalinguistic analysis

“…Second, the categories used to classify definitions have in many cases not been mutually exclusive (Feifel & Lorge, 1950;Wolman & Barker, 1965;Storck & Looft, 1973). Consequently the results are confounded (Holsti, 1969) and valuable information is lost (Wehren et al 1981).…”

Early foreign language education and metalinguistic development

“…Early studies on word definitions focused on the cognitive aspect of worddefinition performance (Al-Issa, 1969;Feifel, 1949;Feilfel & Lorge, 1950;Reichard, Schneider, & Rapaport, 1944;Storck & Looft, 1973;Swartz & Hall, 1972;Terman, 1916;Wolman & Barker, 1965) and have concluded that the development of children's ability to give word definitions is a gradual process from the infantile (functional) type, characteristic of younger children or schizophrenic adults (Feifel, 1949) towards the more mature (superordinate) type that is attributed to children about or older than age 10 and normal adults.…”

“…The restriction of age range was imposed in order to control for variability on word-definition performance due to maturation. The age group 10-11 was chosen because it has been identified by previous research as the age, when the way children define words changes from the functional and perceptual type to the more abstract one that involves identifying hyponyms and their membership in superordinate categories (Al-Issa, 1969;Storck & Looft, 1973;Swartz & Hall, 1972;Watson, 1985). The designation of the three schools was not random because of the nature of the study which required monolingual, bilingual and trilingual subjects.…”