Words and Pictures: A Test of Samuel's Findings

Abstract

This work is concerned with a study of the graphemic-phonemic associations formed during beginning reading responses and with the heuristic value of viewing the formation of such associations as a classical conditioning process. The study consists of two experiments designed as replication and extension of earlier work done by Samuels (1967). S's drawn from grades one and three were tested with a range of picture/no-picture-word association tasks. Experiment I concludes that Samuels' 1967 study was not a test of attentional processes and was not a proper test of whether pictures act as distractors. However, within the visual modality, pictorial representations of extraneous objects may have distracting effects upon reading responses to specific words. Experiment II results suggest that in 1st and 3rd grades there are no significant differences in acquisition of reading responses to printed words between groups that have learned with pictures present and those that have learned in the absence of pictures. Concluding observations are made regarding limitations of the Samuels 1967 design.