David S. Palermo

The ontogeny of brain lateralization for speech and nonspeech stimuli.

Auditory evoked responses (AER) were recorded from the temporal region of both cerebral hemispheres of human infants, children, and adults in response to four speech and two nonspeech acoustic stimuli. Left hemisphere AERs were larger in amplitude than right hemisphere AERs to speech stimuli for all groups. Nonspeech stimuli produced larger amplitude AERs in the right hemisphere. Lateral differences to both types of stimuli were found to decrease with age.

'In', 'On', and 'Under' Revisited.

Abstract The present study presents evidence that young childrens comprehension of the locatives ‘in’, ‘on’, and ‘under’ is, at least in part, contextually determined. Children aged 1;6–3;0 were given tasks with verbal instructions which were either contextually congruent or incongruent. The results were interpreted in terms of the non-linguistic as well as linguistic strategies apparently used to interpret speech. The results and interpretation are in contrast to those of earlier research.

More About Less: A Study of Language Comprehension.

Children in the age range from three to seven were tested in two experiments for their comprehension of the terms more and less . The findings of Donaldson and Balfour (1968) were replicated for both discrete and continuous substances and it was observed that even at age seven some children have not yet differentiated these two terms. Semantic differential ratings by the children gave independent support for these findings. The results were discussed in terms of general cognitive development and conservation tasks.

The effects of associative strength and response hierarchy on paired-associate learning

Summary Two experiments were designed to assess the influence of free-associative strength on the paired-associate learning of children. In each, three groups of fourth-grade children learned lists of ten verbal paired-associates which varied in average associative strength between the stimulus words and the responses. Group I learned a list composed of stimuli and their primary normative responses, five of which were relatively strong and five of which were relatively weak; Group II learned a list composed of the same ten stimuli and responses which occurred to them with an intermediate normative frequency; and Group III learned a list composed of the same stimuli and responses of very low normative frequency. In Experiment I, ease of learning varied with the average associative strength of the pairs at all levels; and differential performance was obtained on Lists I and II between the pairs with stimuli which elicit relatively high-strength primary responses and those which elicit relatively low-strength primary responses. Performance on the former was better than on the latter. Experiment II differed from Experiment I only in that the Ss had a study trial on the lists before learning trials began. The results essentially paralleled those of Experiment I. Such findings have not been obtained with adults and were interpreted as representing differences due to natural language habits of differential strengths. The findings with regard to the differential performance on the two types of pairs were discussed as indications that the forced-frequency nature of the single response normative data caused the relative strengths of the responses following high-strength primary responses to be underestimated when based on absolute normative frequencies.

Word Associations and Children's Verbal Behavior1

Publisher Summary Interest in word associations derives rather directly from a long history of interest in the higher mental processes of man. The relation to the psychology of British Associationism is obvious, but the main impetus for the study of the associative characteristics of words came from a clinical psychologist who attempted to use the word association test as a tool for the diagnosis and understanding of the areas of sensitivity related to the symptoms of his patients. Interest in the clinical significance of the content and reaction time of words given in response to a word association test preceded, by a considerable amount of time, the determination of the characteristics of responses obtained from a normal population. In 1910, however, Kent and Rosanoff reported the associative responses of 1,000 persons, primarily adults, to a list of 100 words. The normative data thus obtained provided a basis of comparison for use by clinicians and helped begin a long series of studies with that particular list of words, which have been useful in the clinical settings and, more recently, have proved valuable in other areas as well.

On the learning of morphological rules: An experimental analogy

Three experiments were conducted using modifications of a paradigm used by Esper (1925) . Using the study-test procedure, Ss learned 16 paired associates in which the stimuli were 2-digit numbers and the responses were 2-letter pairs. Each single digit was associated with a letter to form a four-by-four matrix of 2-digit 2-letter stimulus-response pairs. Sixteen college Ss were presented 12 of the 16 pairs (Exp. I); 12 of the 16 pairs plus 4 irregular pairs (Exp. II); or 12 of the 16 pairs plus 2 irregular pairs (Exp. III), and were tested with the 16 stimuli in all cases. The irregular pairs were presented three times as often (Exp. II) or twice as often (Exp. III) as the regular pairs. It was observed that the omitted pairs were learned quickly after the regularities of the presented pairs were learned; the irregular pairs were learned more rapidly than the regular pairs, and errors on the irregular pairs took the form of overgeneralization of the regular responses. It was assumed that the experimental conditions were analogous to the learning of verb inflection by children and the results were remarkably similar to the behavior of young children acquiring the morphological rules of verb inflection.

Paired-associate learning as a function of the strength of links in the associative chain

Summary This study was designed to replicate and extend the findings and model reported by Jarret and Scheibe to account for the learning of paired-associates in which the associative strength between the stimulus and response or the associative strength of some mediating word between the stimulus and response is known. Three groups of fifth-grade children learned different lists of paired-associates. List A–B was composed of stimuli and responses with high or low associative strength, List A–C was composed of the same stimuli and responses which were not associated with them directly but only through mediated associations of either high or low strength, while List A–X was composed of the same stimuli with responses which were not associated with the stimuli. Associative strength in all cases was based upon word-association norms for fifth grade children. The results strongly supported the model proposed by Jarrett and Scheibe. Mean number of errors varied inversely with the associative strength of the pairs regardless of whether the strength was taken directly from the normative data or was computed by multiplicatively combining the associative strengths of the mediating links forming the chain from the stimulus to the response. Suggestions were made for extensions of the model used and variables which might affect such extensions.

An experimental analogy to the learning of past tense inflection rules

Twenty-four S s learned three single-letter responses to two-digit stimuli. The letter response was contingent upon the environment specified by the second digit. Four exceptions to the rule required different letter responses. The results indicated that two different strategies were employed and the resulting performance followed the pattern observed in the acquisition of past tense inflection by young children. The Irregular Forms were acquired first, by rote learning, and the rule-governed responses second. Once the second strategy was employed the rule was applied to the exceptions, and over-generalization errors to the Irregular Forms occurred. Rate of acquisition of the Irregular Forms was positively related to frequency of presentation, and overgeneralization errors were inversely related to frequency of presentation.

Rule Acquisition as a Function of Number and Frequency of Exemplar Presentation.

Four experiments were conducted in which S s acquired a rule on the basis of repeated presentation of some proportion of the total number of exemplars generated by the rule. Rule governed performance was inferred on the basis of tests for correct responses to exemplars which had never been presented. Rules which generated different finite numbers of exemplars were used. The results were consistent in demonstrating that the presentation of a constant proportion of exemplars was required for rule acquisition but it made little difference whether the proportion consisted of a small number of the total exemplars presented several times or a larger number presented fewer times. This relationship holds regardless of the size of the output of the rule.

Changes in the word associations of fourth- and fifth-grade children from 1916 to 1961

Three sets of word association norms collected from children in grades four and five were examined to determine the changes in word association responses of children over the time period from 1916 to 1961 and to determine the effects of oral and written presentation of the stimuli. The responses of 1000 children obtained by Woodrow and Lowell using oral presentation, of 1000 children obtained by the present authors using written presentation, and of 200 children obtained by the present authors using oral presentation formed the basis of the comparisons. Popular responses, diversity of responses, number of idiosyncratic responses, contrast responses and paradigmatic responses have increased over the time span from 1916 to 1961. Frequency of superordinate responses appears not to have changed over time but differences reported earlier by the present authors seem to be attributable to differences in method of administration. Oral presentation of stimuli results in a greater frequency of contrast responses and a reduction in frequency of superordinate responses. It was concluded that, among the variables associated with the time interval between 1916 and 1961, test-taking practice and increased linguistic sophistication of children has been primarily responsible for the changes in word associations observed.