Studies the effects of modeling and reversibility cues in teaching 4-year-olds to conserve length. Results are discussed in terms of a social learning viewpoint of cognitive development. (ED)

Research supported by grants HD-01888 and HD-01136 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and grant No. GS-541 from the National Science Foundation.

Research supported by grant APA-178 from the National Research Council of Canada.

Social facilitation as a self-presentational display, and social performance impairment attributable to perceived public failure, are examined in a study of context effects in verbal learning. Female undergraduates (N=72) served as subjects with one male who served as an "audience." Performance data indicate that, consistent with the present…

USING THE METHODOLOGY DEVISED BY JEAN BERKO (1958) TO TEST AMERICAN CHILDREN ON THEIR INTERNALIZATION OF ENGLISH GRAMMATICAL RULES, 92 MEXICAN CHILDREN OF CIUDAD GUZMAN, JALISCO, WERE TESTED TO DETERMINE THEIR INTERNALIZATION OF SPANISH GRAMMAR. THE CHILDREN WERE FROM THE LOWER SOCIO-ECONOMIC CLASS, AS WERE THE 18 ADULTS WHO TOOK THE SAME TEST TO…

THE VERBAL BEHAVIOR OF CHILDREN FROM FOUR GRADE LEVELS (10, EIGHT, SIX, AND FOUR) WAS INVESTIGATED BY HAVING EACH SUBJECT (S) LEARN TO FREE-RECALL THREE 20-WORD LISTS OF UNRELATED WORDS. A MULTITRIAL PROCEDURE WAS USED IN WHICH SS EXPERIENCED 10 CONSECUTIVE LEARNING AND TEST TRIALS ON EACH LIST. TWO MEASURES WERE USED TO ANALYZE BOTH INTRALIST AND…

This reports the effects of the number of relevant stimulus dimensions and figural versus verbal stimuli on the concept learning ability of college students. Results force a consideration of mediational variables in explaining this form of cognitive learning. A set of verbal materials analogous to a set of dimensionalized figural materials was…

Some 96 fourth-grade boys participated in a study investigating the influence of personality and stimulus characteristics on perceptions of the meanings of verbal evaluations, and the functioning of differentially perceived evaluations as reinforcers in a learning task. Personality variables measured were anxiety, locus of control, need for…

This investigation examined in the laboratory the type of learning commonly found in the school situation--the formalized acquisition of concepts. A verbal concept-learning task suitable for college students was devised which permitted the externalizing and quantifying of behavior at 6 points in the learning process. A pilot study evaluated the…

Subjects were given three trials to speak and to write as fast as they could both the alphabet and a set of two-digit numbers. The speed or oral responding was approximately 6 syllables per second for letters and 7 syllables per second for digits. The speed for writing was approximately 2 items per second for both digits and letters. Correlations…

The theoretical functions of external feedback in SR and closed loop models of verbal learning are presented. Contradictory predictions from the models are tested with a three by three factorial experiment including three types of feedback and three amounts of rehearsal. There were 90 adult students run individually and they were required to learn…

Reported is a study of the effect of having seventh grade science students make overt verbal responses in written form to questions of varying degrees of complexity following sequential segments of programed instruction on Newtonian mechanics. It was hypothesized that students responding to more complex questions would have significantly higher…

The study demonstrates: (1) the occurrence of verbal mediation with its facilitory effect, and (2) the interfering effect of verbal satiation on mediational processes in a three-state chaining paradigm. 40 preschool children were randomly assigned to either a control (no satiation) or an experimental (satiation) group. The subjects in the control…

This study sought (1) to discover ways to teach kindergarten children to listen to a rule that defines a concept and then to apply it, and (2) to learn if rule-learning is facilitated when the pupil is required to verbalize the rule while using it. The task used in the study (1) involves deductive reasoning, (2) requires rule utilization rather…

Previous research has found that spoken rehearsal is superior to silent rehearsal during verbal discrimination learning. The frequency theory posits that verbal discrimination (VD) learning improves as the frequency differential between the correct and incorrect member of each pair increases. Erlebacher, Hill, and Wallace (1967) tested this…