Word Sorting Research Articles

"WORD SORT”: A CATEGORIZATION STRATEGY FOR IMPROVING WORD RECOGNITION ABILITY

Describes an inductive categorization strategy for helping children develop word recognition ability. Using a third grade remedial reader as a case study, the diagnosis of a specific word recognition problem is made and defended. This is followed by a step‐by‐step description of a teaching procedure (word sort) that engages the child in actively analyzing, contrasting, and eventually internalizing the various base vowel patterns (CVC, CVCe, CVVC, etc.) in the English orthography. The article closes with some theoretical and interpretive comments that support the use of the word sort teaching strategy.

Allusive thinking, the Word Halo and verbosity.

The concept of allusive thinking is briefly reviewed and a Pavlovian model of thinking advanced. It is hypothesized that allusive, as compared with non-allusive thinkers, have a broader but less intense attention process associated with weaker inhibition. From this model it was predicted that on word tests which require judgements of similarity of meaning, allusive thinkers would tend to choose more remote or unusual words as similar in meaning. The Word Halo Test and the Word Sorting Test were administered to 63 university students using the Object Sorting Test as a measure of allusive thinking. The prediction that allusive thinkers would choose more unusual words as similar in meaning was supported. A tendency for allusive thinkers to be more verbose than non-allusive thinkers was also noted.

Memory and organization: Category recall and retrieval capacity

Three experiments are reported concerning the linear relationship between recall (R) and the number of categories (NC) formed in sorting of words. In Experiment I, free recall learning preceded sorting into two to seven categories; the NC-R correlation was not significant. In Experiment II, the category limit and sorting criterion were removed, and a significant NC-R correlation was observed. In Experiment III, Ss sorted as in Experiment II and then recalled; the NC-R correlation was significant for the full range of NC (2–19). In view of (a) the positive correlation over the upper range of NC, and (b) the apparent absence of a limit on category retrieval, an alternative to Mandler's model was offered.

Catullus, 55. 9–12

Catullus has been looking everywhere for his friend Camerius. In Pompey's arcade he has accosted all the girls who were hanging about there, but they have calmly disavowed knowledge of his friend's whereabouts. At line 9 Catullus breaks into flagitatio, the beginning of which is desperately corrupt: attempts to emend avelte have been made, but it seems more realistic to assume that avelte is the result of some corruption of quas vultu at the beginning of line 8 (with which it has four letters, a v lt, in common, and e - - e corresponding to u - -u), and that it has ousted the original beginning of line 9. In terms of a flagitatio—the girls are pessimae inasmuch as they are allegedly withholding what is Catullus' own, his friend, from him—the sort of word one expects is redde or cedo. Hence reddatis here, merely exempli gratia, would be one conceivable way of introducing the demand. (The ellipse of the imperatives da and cedo which Fordyce alludes to is a well-known feature of colloquial Latin, but it would be most unnatural in a flagitatio to omit the most significant and forceful word, the imperative claiming the return of Catullus' friend.)

Word sorting and free recall

Using Mandler’s word sorting task, the effect of a possible experimental artifact which might account for the relation between the number of categories used and recall was investigated. When Ss sort into more piles, more cards are exposed to view, giving Ss the opportunity to scan more words. If scanning is analogous to repetition of the individual words, increased recall could be due to increased exposure to the words rather than to the use of more categories. No difference in the category-recall function was obtained between Ss who were and who were not allowed to see the top cards in the piles. These results suggest that repetition per se is not the cause of increased recall with more categories.

The Word Sort: An instrument for semantic analysis

An objective instrument is developed which provides reliable psychological data with reference to semantic denotative features or components. The instrument, the Word Sort, is in the form of an individual word game in which Ss are instructed to arrange words into a number of groups according to some meaningful principle. Kinship terms were provided 21 Ss for dimensionalizing. Relatively high agreement among Ss was found with respect to the determination of semantic features.

Language and Psychology

some ways out of this dilemma, but this has been achieved so far only at the cost of sacrificing many of our most treasured human values. Considerations such as these raise questions con¬ cerning the interrelations of the sociopolitical nature of the economic system, on the one hand, and the nature, incidence, and management of so-called mental illnesses, on the other. This problem, however, was not within the scope of Dr. Fein's study. It is, I think, unfortunate that it was not. Thomas S. Szasz, M.D. Syracuse, N. Y. Language and Psychology. By Samuel Reiss. Price, $3.75. Pp. 296, including Appendix. Philosophical Library, Inc., 15 E. 40th St., New York 16, 1959. Language, as a symbolic function, is one of the phenomena which most clearly differentiates the human from the animal world. The present volume is both a plea for, and a method of, studying language as a means of obtaining insight into the characteristics of the human thought process. As an approach to the origin of language, this book offers a wide range of rich and suggestive ideas. It fails to satisfy as a scholarly work, however, primarily because the author does not include for elucidation and comparison either the ideas or the material of other investigators using related approaches. The problem, as Reiss sees it, is to determine what sort of entities words are and by what

Language and Psychology.

Language, as a symbolic function, is one of the phenomena which most clearly differentiates the human from the animal world. The present volume is both a plea for, and a method of, studying language as a means of obtaining insight into the characteristics of the human thought process. As an approach to the origin of language, this book offers a wide range of rich and suggestive ideas. It fails to satisfy as a scholarly work, however, primarily because the author does not include for elucidation and comparison either the ideas or the material of other investigators using related approaches. The problem, as Reiss sees it, is to determine what sort of entities words are and by what means they become linked to their range of meanings. The author presents, as his answer to this problem, the thesis that the process of vocabulary creation is essentially one of metaphor creation; that