Verbal Concepts Research Articles

Retarded, normal, and superior subjects' attainment of verbal concepts at two levels of inclusiveness.

Retarded, normal, and superior Ss were compared on their grouping object-level words by criteria at two levels of inclusiveness. With MA held constant, the groups did not differ in level of concept attainment. With CA held constant, the groups did differ: the superior exceeded the retarded and normal; and the normal exceeded the retarded. The groups did not respond differentially to the two levels of inclusiveness; and so, relationships between the groups remained constant at both levels.

Mediation and interference in verbal concept learning

The Ss learned five words, of which 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 were names of objects in one class (concept). Trials to learn were highest for 3 same-class words, then decreased sharply for 4 and 5 same-class words. It was suggested that the results could be accounted for by a changing combination of interference and facilitation from concept mediation among same-class words.

Individual differences in memory and the serial position effect

The present study investigated changes, if any, in the serial position curve when Ss were grouped on the basis of high to low recall scores. Ss received eight lists of verbal concept formation materials (Type I) for recall and eight weeks later, eight lists of nonsense syllables material (Type II) for recall. A group by serial position interaction was found for Type I but not Type II material. Differential primacy-recency effects for the serial position curves were found for the two types of material. A correlation of.62 between performance on Type I and Type II material was obtained.

Retention of visual and verbal codes of the same stimuli.

80 6s were shown drawings of common objects and later given verbal recall tests for the object names, followed by visual recognition tests scaled to reflect the accuracy of the visual retention. A 2X2X2 design permitted assessment of the effects of degree of training, of retention interval, and of instructions to verbalize during training. The most significant finding was that the probability of recall of object names is essentially uncorrelated with the accuracy of visual recognition of these same objects by the same 5s. As an explanation the possibility of independent storage systems for the visual and verbal information related to the same objects was considered but rejected as improbable. Verbal recall 2 wk. after training seemed to be based largely upon the retrieval of visual storage. The receding potential of visual storage into a verbal concept appears to be determined by those aspects of the visual storage which distinguish the object class, and not by aspects which distinguish among objects of the same class. Visual storage losses of both aspects occurred during the 2-wk. period examined, but no significant correlation existed between the 2 types of losses. Nonverbal information may be encoded verbally to facilitate storage and retrieval. Some verbal receding seems to occur almost instantaneously at the time of the input; in other instances the information may be stored nonverbally, and the receding is delayed until retrieval becomes necessary. Receding would appear to be

Classical conditioning of the galvanic skin response to verbal concepts.

Classical conditioning of the galvanic skin response to verbal concepts.

Anxiety and verbal concept learning.

Anxiety and verbal concept learning.

Transfer and mediation in verbal concept learning

In a training task, one group of Ss was reinforced for a set of words belonging to one class (Cl), another group was reinforced for a set of words not belonging to a class (Ncl). In transfer, half of each group was shifted to a set of words belonging to another Cl, the other half was shifted to another set of Ncl words. In both the training and the transfer tasks, learning was faster when Cl words were relevant than when Ncl words were relevant. In transfer, learning was also faster when previously reinforced-now irrelevant words were Cl rather than Ncl. Mediation appears to operate among irrelevant as well as among relevant Cl words, although the effect of mediation was greater among relevant words.

Some Effects of Deprivation on Intelligence, Achievement, and Cognitive Growth

Many assumptions have been made concerning the probable effects of extended periods of non-schooling. A typical assumption is that basic learning such as the attainment of verbal concepts, reading comprehension, and arithmetic reasoning can be acquired more readily in a formal school setting with a teacher trained in educational methodology. However, a review of the literature indicates that the above assumption, so often taken for granted, rarely has been empirically assessed. This lack of psychological research on the effects of non-schooling stems from the -national trend of universal school attendance.

All-or-none transfer based on verbally mediated concepts

The problem of generalization and transfer is discussed relative to all-or-none learning, and a theory is proposed which combines features of the selection-of-strategies theory and the pattern-conditioning theory. A question is raised whether transfer of training involves recognition that must occur when a new item is first presented, or continued opportunities for transfer as long as the new item remains unlearned. This question is seen to involve different hypotheses about the initial and transition parameters of the Markov chain which describes the learning of items during a transfer task. Data are presented from an experiment in which positive transfer of training occurred based on generalization among members of a verbal concept-category. The data are consistent with the hypothesis that transfer occurred on the first presentation of a new item or not at all. The data are adequately fit by a theory expressed as a Markov chain in which learning is an all-or-none event. Statistical tests indicate that the effect of transfer can be described as a change in the initial vector of the chain, but that the learning parameters in the transition matrix varied little or not at all among conditions which differed widely in amounts of transfer. Finally, the amounts of transfer in 12 conditions are analyzed in relation to assumptions about the acquisition of verbal concepts and the recognition of new instances after a concept has been acquired.

Some factors involved in classroom procedures for the acquisition of verbal concepts

Some factors involved in classroom procedures for the acquisition of verbal concepts

A FACTOR ANALYTIC STUDY OF THREE TYPES OF CONCEPT ATTAINMENT TASKS

ABSTRACTInvestigators of concept attainment have developed and used a wide variety of concept attainment tasks. This has made it difficult, if not impossible, to assess the generality of the results obtained in the various experiments that use different tasks. The purposes of this study were to determine if communalities exist among three types of human concept attainment tasks, and, If so, to relate the factors to previously identified reference factors. The supposition of a common factor or factors was based upon a Mediation Theory. Other purposes of the study were to determine if subjects who solved the tasks used the same abilities that nonsolving subjects used, and to find out if these abilities were used on more than one type of task.A battery of 16 paper‐and‐pencil reference tests, representing seven previously identified factors, was administered to 119 male ninth‐grade students. The seven factors or ability measures represented were flexibility of closure, induction, associative memory, number facility, general reasoning, syllogistic reasoning, and verbal comprehension. After the reference battery was given, subjects were tested on 12 concepts that represented three types of tasks: nonverbal concepts restricted by the attributes of the stimuli (card sort tasks), nonverbal concepts not restricted by the attributes of the stimuli (Goldstein's tasks), and verbal concepts (Allison's tasks).Intercorrelations were computed and factor analyses were carried out on the reference test scores and concept attainment error scores for each of the following groups of subjects: total group, N = 119; total solvers of the concept tasks, N = 76; and total nonsolvers, N = 43. Eleven factors were extracted and rotated to an equamax solution for all groups.Five factors (I, II, III, IV, and V) were clearly defined by the reference tests and were interpreted as numerical ability, reasoning, verbal ability, memory, and selective attention. Two factors (VI and VII) were not clearly defined by either the reference tests or the concept attainment tasks. For reasons of parsimony and continuity with previously identified factors, Factors VI and VII were identified by the highest loadings of the reference tests. Factor VI was called syllogistic reasoning and Factor VII was called general reasoning. Factor VIII was related to the order of presentation of the concept tasks. The remaining factors had loadings for both the reference tests and the concept attainment tasks, although only one type of concept attainment task characterized each factor. The three factors were interpreted as: (a) verbal concept attainment (Factor IX) which involves deductive reasoning; (b) a concept attainment ability (Factor X) that utilizes inductive reasoning; and (c) a concept attainment ability (Factor XI) characterized by the five Goldstein tasks.It was concluded that (a) communalities do exist between different concept attainment tasks, however, these communalities are restrictive and do not include all tasks within the types defined by this study. Therefore, further analyses of the relationships between concept attainment tasks will be necessary before the results of experiments can be compared if different types of concept attainment tasks are used. (b) Certain reference test abilities are related to certain concept attainment abilities. (c) Nonsolvers, in an attempt to solve concept attainment tasks, use reference abilities that solvers do not use. The reference abilities that nonsolvers use vary with the concept attainment task they are trying to attain.

Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social Structure

The main body of the book is concerned with the theme that empirical political behaviour among the Kachin is a compromise response to the polarised political doctrines of gumsa and gumlao.. Nearly one-third of this book consists of Chapter V entitiled 'The Structural Categories of Kachin Gumsa Society'. It is concerned with the interpretation of a series of verbal concepts and their interconnections. This long chapter is placed between a relatively short account of a particular Kachin community directly observed (Chapter IV) and a series of chapters (VI, VII, VIII) containing secondhand ethnographic and historical evidence.

CONCEPT UTILIZATION, SERIAL ORDER AND RECALL IN NURSERY-SCHOOL CHILDREN

Bousfield's associative clustering method, which has been used to study verbal mediation, concept utilization and Miller's unitization hypothesis, was examined in an S-O-R framework. Words, pictures and objects were presented as stimuli to nursery-school children, and their clustering, serial ordering, and total recall of these stimuli were measured. It was found that: (1) 2-year-old Ss clustered at a level significantly above chance; (2) the majority of Ss did not use serial order in their recall until age 4; (3) total recall varied significantly with independent variation in method of stimulus presentation, CA, and trials. The relevance of these results for Miller's unitization hypothesis was discussed and further research was suggested to determine whether a process of stimulus reorganization or simple rote memory was more basic for learning in young children.

SEQUENCE EFFECTS IN PROGRAMED LEARNING OF A VERBAL CONCEPT.

SEQUENCE EFFECTS IN PROGRAMED LEARNING OF A VERBAL CONCEPT.

Mediation in verbal concept learning

In a study of mediation in verbal concept learning, words that are members of known classes, and words that could not readily be classed with other task words, were each used both as relevant and as irrelevant stimuli. These four conditions were studied in three experiments that varied in the number of relevant and irrelevant words presented. The results were the same, on the whole, in all three experiments, both in terms of trials to learn, and with an error measure assumed to be sensitive to mediation. Among relevant words, class words were more rapidly learned, and showed more evidence of mediation, than nonclass words. Among irrelevant words, there was no difference, as a main effect, between class vs. nonclass words. There was a significant interaction such that when class words were relevant, performance was usually better with nonclass irrelevant words, but when nonclass words were relevant, performance was better with irrelevant class words. It was suggested that there was evidence for mediation of response when class words were positively reinforced, and perhaps for mediation of nonresponse when class words were negatively reinforced.

SOCIAL AND NONSOCIAL VERBAL CONCEPTS OF DEAF AND HEARING CHILDREN.

SOCIAL AND NONSOCIAL VERBAL CONCEPTS OF DEAF AND HEARING CHILDREN.

CONTROLLING STUDENT RESPONSES THROUGH PROGRAMMED VISUAL PRESENTATIONS.

An experiment was performed to demonstrate: (1) that student responses can be effectively brought under the control of programmed visual presentations, and (2) that verbal concepts can be acquired through the practice of discriminations about non-verbally presented science demonstrations. Results based on the test performance of 7th and 8th grade students provided support for both propositions.

THE CONNOTATIVE AND SYMBOLIC MEANING OF THE BENDER GESTALT.

Summary The purpose of the present study was to test Hutt and Briskin's symbolic interpretations of the Bender-Gestalt figures. 40 males and 40 females rated the 9 Bender figures on the semantic differential; 12 verbal concepts (Personal Relations, Dependency, Man, Sexual Intercourse, Anger, Penis, My Mother, My Father, Sexuality, Me, Vagina and Woman) were also rated by these same Ss and modified D scores were computed to determine those verbal concepts which were similar in meaning to each of the Bender figures. The semantic differential ratings and the D scores between each verbal concept-Bender figure pair were used to test Hutt and Briskin's hypothsized symbolic meanings. With the exception of figures 6 and 7, no consistent empirical confirmation was obtained for their suggested meanings of the Bender figures. These findings consequently fail to justify the clinical practice of routinely interpreting the symbolic meaning of the Bender.

Concept-Utilization as a function of the strenth of relevant and irrelevant associations

Summary The present study was undertaken to develop and evaluate a task situation designed to permit the investigation of verbal concept utilization with verbal units whose requisite associations had been acquired in the laboratory. A two-stage task was developed. Stage 1, a variant of paired-associate training, was used to establish an associative relationship between concept instances and their attributes. Each instance had one relevant and one irrelevant attribute. The strength of this relationship was varied during Stage 1 by means of the number (10, 20, or 40) of paired instance-attribute presentations. In Stage 2, concept utilization, S was required to discover the relevant basis for sorting instances into one of three slots. As predicted, it was found that, in terms of the mean number of errors per trial during concept utilization, proficiency in sorting was directly related to the strength of the association between concept instances and their relevant attribute. Proficiency was inversely related to the strength of the association with irrelevant attributes. It was concluded that the present technique appears to be a feasible alternative to the use of normative material in studies of verbal concept utilization and that it may circumvent some of the difficulties encountered with such material.

VERBAL CONCEPT LEARNING AS A FUNCTION OF INSTRUCTIONS AND DOMINANCE LEVEL.

VERBAL CONCEPT LEARNING AS A FUNCTION OF INSTRUCTIONS AND DOMINANCE LEVEL.