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Pictures and words as stimulus and response items in paired-associate learning of young children

1968; Elsevier BV; Volume: 6; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/0022-0965(68)90087-8

1096-0457

Marcia Grace Dilley, Allan Paivio,

Reading and Literacy Development

One hundred and twenty children, 40 each from nursery school, kindergarten, and first-grade classes, learned one of four paired-associate lists in which the items were pictures (P) and aurally presented words (W). Each list was homogeneous as to pair type, the four S-R combinations being P-P, P-W, W-P, and W-W. The major findings indicated that pictures significantly facilitated learning as stimulus terms (this effect being greatest in first-grade and least for kindergarten children) but hindered learning as response terms. An interaction of stimulus and response modes resulted mainly from the superior learning for P-W pairs. In addition, a triple interaction involving trials showed that W-P pairs were significantly inferior to P-P and W-W pairs on the last six of ten learning trials. The facilitating effect of pictures as stimuli and the general pattern of the stimulus by response interaction are consistent with results previously obtained with adults. The negative effect of pictures as responses, not obtained with adults, was predicted from the hypothesis that children would experience greater difficulty than adults in decoding the memory image of an object into the appropriate verbal response.