Effect of subject-determined verbalization on discrimination learning in preschoolers.

EDRS Price MF$0.25 HC$0.80 Descriptors-*BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE RESEARCH, *COGNITIVE PROCESSES COMPARATIVE TESTING, DISCRIMINATION LEARNING, *KINESTHETIC PERCEPTION, MEDIATION THEORY, NONVERBAL LEARNING, *PRESCH001 CHILDREN. RESEARCH PROJECTS, STIMULUS BEHAVIOR, VERBAL LEARNING Previous experiments with nursery school children have suggested that (1) subjects of preschool age do not verbalize during transfer learning or that (2) for these subjects, self-produced verbal cues have little influence on the learning process. To investigate the relative merits of these alternative positions, research was conducted among 80 nursery school children in Champaign and Urbana, Illinois. The subjects were assigned discrimination tasks with stimub varying in either brightness or size. Half of the subjects were required to verbalize their choices. The others responded throughout the experiment without speaking. Confirmation was found for the preliminary postulates that verbalization would cause most subjects to use bribhtness labels to describe the stimulus regardless of the dimension and ihat verbalization would significantly facilitate performance on the brightness dimension. Contrary to prediction, however, verbalization did not interfere with performance on the size dimension. The results of this research suggest that, for nursery school children, size discrimination is determined by proprioceptive feedback and is not, therefore, greatly influenced by verbalization. Detailed methodological and theoretical discussions are included in this research report and statistics are reported in five