Antonym adjective contexts and the facilitation of noun-pair learning in children

Abstract

Second and sixth graders were asked to learn noun pairs linked by various types of verbal connectives: verbs, unmarked and marked comparative adjectives, polar antonym adjective pairs, and conjunctions. Results indicated that all contexts produced better learning than conjunctions, that comparative adjective effects were comparable to verb effects, and that both of these sentence contexts were superior to the polar-pair condition which consisted of conjoined noun phrases. Also, in all conditions, first- and final-position nouns were found to prompt equivalent recall. Results provide compelling evidence for the operation of adjective structures as mnemonic organizers in younger as well as older children, and they challenge imagistic accounts of the verb facilitation effect.