Syntactic facilitation of children's associative learning: An instructional effect

Abstract

An experiment is reported in which connective recall, as well as noun recall, was obtained in a pair-associate learning, syntactic facilitation paradigm. Dfferences in the pattern of noun and connective recall, and a partial independence in the two types of recall, were obtained. These results were interpreted as consistent with the hypothesis that experimenter-supplied verb links facilitate noun pair learning by serving an instructional role, indicating to the subject how a pair might be coded.