Earl C. Butterfield

The Relations of Short-Term Memory to Development and Intelligence

Publisher Summary This chapter summarizes the current status of knowledge about relationships of forgetting rate to chronological and mental age (CA and MA) and to intelligence (IQ), and to consider the methodological limitations and interpretative difficulties encountered in the research upon which this current knowledge is based. The chapter reviews those studies in which both forgetting rate and IQ or age (early childhood to adulthood) are observable variables, whether or not the investigators were explicitly concerned with the correlation of memory with age and IQ. The approach used to separate acquisition and retrieval to assess their contributions to total short-term memory (STM) functioning is also discussed.

Validating theories of intelligence.

Publisher Summary This chapter describes a research strategy for validating theories of intelligence. The strategy is required by the wide acceptance of two simple ideas. The first is that intelligence develops: Behavior becomes increasingly complex and abstractly organized with age. The second idea is that individual differences in intelligence are general: People who perform relatively intelligently in one situation are likely to perform relatively intelligently in other situations. Even though some people use specialized forms of knowledge and specialized ways of thinking, a person must behave effectively in general to be termed intelligent. In the Piagetian argument, an instructional experiment has not influenced intelligence unless it has changed a wide range of uninstructed behaviors as well as the instructed ones. The idea can be seen in any standardized test of intelligence, because even the most factorially pure tests yield composite IQ or mental age scores.

Lexical Codability and Age.

People of ages 4, 6, 8, 10, 20, and 70 years named pictures that were selected to represent the entire range of lexical consensus among 20-year-olds. The age at which people less than 20 selected the same names as 20-year-olds was inversely related to consensus among 20-year-olds. Consensus within each group increased with age, up to 20. The elderly were relatively childlike with respect to degree of disagreement with adults and consensus among themselves, but the cross-sectional character of the data precludes definitive interpretation of the elderlys responses. The developmental data are consistent with the view that peoples vocabularies reflect their linguistic experience, and that words which code culturally important events are acquired earlier than words which code less-important events. The data also strengthen the inference, which was previously based on studies of adults alone, that acquisition age may be a particularly important characteristic of the verbal materials used in psychological experiments.

Testing Process Theories of Intelligence

A dauntingly complex but necessary research strategy follows from two simple beliefs about intelligence. The first belief is that intelligence develops: behavior becomes increasingly complex and abstractly organized with age. The second belief is that individual differences in intelligence are general: people who perform intelligently in one situation are more likely than people who don’t to perform intelligently in another situation. Given that there are specialized forms of knowledge and specialized modes of thought, it is still true that to be termed intelligent a person must behave in generally effective ways. Despite their simplicity, these two beliefs are universally accepted. The developmental character of intelligence is accepted by process and structural theorists alike; it is accepted by continuity and noncontinuity theorists, by those who do and those who do not subscribe to stage theories, as well as by those who accept the antitheoretical view that intelligence is only what IQ tests measure. The belief that intellectual differences are general can be seen in the functionalist argument that intelligence is adaptability, since adaptability amounts to performing well in diverse situations. It can be seen in the Piagetian argument that an instructional experiment cannot be claimed to have influenced intelligence unless it has changed a wide range of uninstructed behaviors as well as the instructed ones. It can be seen in any standardized test of intelligence, since even the factorially purest tests yield composite IQ or MA scores. The research implications of these two beliefs fall on all who would test theories of intelligence.

Cognitive Theory and Mental Development

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the subject of cognitive theory and mental development. Cognitive psychologys subject matter is peoples mental states and processes. To expose these, it uses laboratory methods developed for the study of attention, memory, language, and perception, and especially the techniques of verbal learning experimentation. Its goal is to create generalized or nomothetic theory of human cognition. This chapter characterizes some of the changes in experimental psychology since 1950. Starting there allows, presenting a broad picture of the backdrop for the present state of affairs. The chapter describes the contemporary experimental psychology that is perhaps better called cognitive psychology, as having a poor match between its conception of scientific explanation and its methods for testing theory. The chapter explains two methods that hold some promise of meeting the implicit requirements of cognitive psychologys conception of scientific explanation. It is proposed that techniques of cognitive instruction and tests for individual differences can provide needed empirical validation for cognitive theory. The chapter also explains the methods that seem promising for general experimental psychology are being refined first by specialists in retardation and childhood.

The interaction of pronunciability and response pretraining on the paired-associate performance of third-grade children ☆ ☆☆

Abstract Following relevant, irrelevant, or no pretraining with the response terms of a paired-associate (PA) task, third-grade children were compared on PA performance. The response terms represented three levels of rated pronunciability within lists. Analysis of free learning indicated that performance increased as rated pronunciability increased. Analysis of PA performance revealed a facilitation due to relevant pretraining which increased as ease of pronunciability decreased. Examination of the types of errors committed during PA learning related the beneficial effect of relevant pretraining to a greater availability of the response terms for recall.

The effects of practice upon rehearsal in short-term memory

Ss were allowed to pace their acquisition of nine items in a memory task, and the distribution of their rehearsal was measured. Peak rehearsal pauses changed positions across the first five trials but occurred at the same positions across the last five. Thus, Ss used the first trials to test various acquisition strategies and select among them the one that enabled them to maximize their recall.