THIS PAPER DEALS WITH SOME PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF RHETORICAL FORM AND STRUCTURE. THE SUGGESTION IS MADE THAT THE FIRST CONSIDERATION IS A DEFINITION OF THE ENTITY--THE EFFECTIVE STIMULUS--TO WHICH THE S (SUBJECT) RESPONDS. THIS MEANS A SPECIFICATION OF FUNCTIONAL CONTEXT, IN WHICH THE S VIEWS A GIVEN LANGUAGE PERFORMANCE. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL…

If older children automatically label pictorial stimuli, then their performance should be impaired on tasks in which such labeling would increase the error rate. Children were asked to learn pairs of verbal or pictorial stimuli which, when combined, formed a different compound word (BUTTER-FLY). Subsequently, a false recognition test that included…

In an absolute frequency judgment task, 130 sixth graders received either high-frequency (Hi-F), low-frequency, high-meaningfulness (Lo-F/Hi-M), or low-frequency, low-meaningfulness (Lo-F/Lo-M) words selected from the 1944 Thorndike-Lorge list. Subjects were asked to either pronounce the words aloud, listen to the examiner prounounce the written…

The present study, conducted at the Department of Audiology and Sciences, Michigan State University, consisted of determining the intelligibility of 648 Spanish stimulus-words arranged in a multiple-choice test of the two forms, A and B, each including 12 lists of approximately the same degree of difficulty. (Appendix.) This multiple-choice test…

The purpose of these four studies (two pilot studies and two experiments) was to investigate the effects of verbal processes and dimensional preferences in children's learning and transfer. Experiment I investigated the effect of verbal instructions upon motor responses. Discriminate verbal instructions produced statistically significant higher…

Two groups of retarded adolescents were presented sets of multiple verbal directions (imperative sentences). One group was exposed to pictures illustrating the objects and action of each direction in addition to the verbal directions. Subjects were required to carry out performances demanded by the directions. The direction-following behavior of…

Verbal description, recall, and recognition of complex meaningful pictures by children were studied, varying amount of stimuli and similarity of distractors. Across subjects (sex, ethnic group, and grade level) verbal measures were poor predictors of recognition accuracy. Across stimuli, amount recalled and recognition accuracy were both related…

Research on massed practice (MP) and distributed practice effects to preschool children in free recall tasks is reported. A total of 40 kindergarten children were randomly assigned to High Frequency and Low Frequency word groups. No significant differences were found between the two groups on the dimensions of IQ and age. Lists of 32 high…

This study examines the phonetic effect and retention of preschoolers who were presented with a differential picture-matching task of phonetically similar and unrelated lists, under a condition in which verbal components of the task were emphasized and under a condition in which the children engaged in overt, cumulative rehearsal. (GO)

Three experiments are reported regarding reaction time. Letter comparison time was found to increase when other irrelevant letters were present, regardless of whether or not the letters made up a word or a word-like configuration. Word comparison time was found to increase when distractors were similar to targets. (Author/RM)

Describes a heuristic model that facilitates the conceptualization of linguistic-imaginal processes and forms the basis for a method of relating learner aptitudes to specific instructional stimuli in science education. (MLH)

Results of a study to determine whether paired-comparisons i intransitivity is a function of intransitivity associated with specific stimulus objects rather than a function of the entire set of stimulus objects suggested that paired-comparisons intransitivity relates to individual differences variables associated with the respondent. (Author/CTM)

1,242 subjects, in five experiments plus a pilot study, saw a series of slides depicting a single auto-pedestrian accident. These experiments investigate how information supplied after an event influences a witness's memory for that event. Results suggest that information supplied a witness after an event, whether inconsistent or misleading, is…

This series of experiments was designed to evaluate a model of picture and word encoding. The primary assumptions are that both sensory and semantic codes can be activated for both pictures and words but the relative order of access to phonemic information is different for the two types of representation. (Editor/RK)

This study indicates that in performing a task involving verbal control of nonverbal behavior, males and females aged 3-5 integrate functional systems differently in order to achieve the same adaptive effect. (GO)