Verbal context versus visual compound in paired-associate learning by children

Abstract

Children at three age levels (4, 7, and 9) learned a paired-associate picture list by verbal context, reciting a sentence combining the nominally unrelated stimulus and response items in an interaction, or by visual compound, viewing a special picture combining the identical items in a pictorially equivalent interaction. Verbal context and visual compound were significantly superior to the control condition, but the overall superiority of the verbal over the visual presentation together with suggestive trends from posttest interviews support the notion that children preferentially utilize the verbal mode of representation as early as age four and are more likely to give covert verbal descriptions to visual presentation than covert visualizing responses to verbal presentation.