Methodological and substantive issues concerning the relative efficacy of various kinds of verbal elaborations on the learning and reversal performance of paired noun items by 6- to 7-year-old children were studied. Results indicated that a verbal elaboration methodology could be a viable approach to studying discourse and other language-based…

Language development in preschool children was studied using pairs of pictures with three types of verbal elaboration formed for each pair. After a training trial thirty children listened to one of three types of elaboration (simple sentence, compound or complex sentence, and paragraph). They were asked to name the corresponding response item.…

The effects of five elaboration conditions on the paired associate learning of 50 educable mentally retarded children (mean age 9 years) were investigated. Four of the conditions were included in a two factor design (type of relation x familiarity); the fifth (nonsense condition) was included as an outside control. Ten children were tested in each…

Reported were two studies designed to clarify the effects of verbal elaboration on children's learning. Study I was undertaken to replicate, with controlled training times, an earlier investigation of the effects of three types of extended verbal elaboration (sentences, semantic paragraphs, and syntactic paragraphs). Trials to criterion analyses…

The effects of five verbal elaboration conditions on the paired associate learning of 50 elementary-aged educable mentally retarded children were investigated. Four of the conditions, crossing functional and positional relations in familiar or unfamiliar events, were included in a two-factor design (type of relation x familiarity); the fifth…

Two studies investigated characteristics of verbal elaborations (length and number of relations provided by the syntactic construction) to determine what makes them effective mediators for young children. Study I treated the role of an elaboration's length in facilitating paired associate learning in 22 nursery school children. Data indicated that…

The relevance of these findings to previous failures to find transfer and their implications for educational practice are discussed. (Authors)

Study investigated the effects of task difficulty on the paired-associate learning of retardates when extended elaboration conditions are employed. (Authors)

In a replication of a similar study with American children, 56 normal native Israeli children (5-years-old) were studied to determine the universality of self-generated verbal mediators as a means of enhancing memory processes. Eight Ss, randomly selected, were assigned in each of the following conditions: labeling, sentence generation, listening…

The relative effectiveness of three types of elaboration (sentences, semantic paragraphs, and syntactic paragraphs) on paired associate learning in 75 educable mentally retarded Ss was tested under list lengths of eight, 12, 16 and 24 pairs. For all lists except the eight pair list, the elaborators were found to be equally and highly effective as…

Discussion of short-term and long-term memory in learning paired associates focuses on two microcomputer-based instructional design experiments with eleventh and twelfth graders that were modeled after traditional drill and practice routines. Research questions are presented, treatment conditions are explained, and additional research is…