ERIC Number: ED151091
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1977-Mar
Pages: 39
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
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A Neo-Piagetian Analysis of Communication Performance in Young Children.
Foorman, Barbara R.
This exploratory study was conducted to interpret age and individual differences in 48 kindergarteners' and second graders' performance on a referential communication task in light of the Pascual-Leone Theory of Constructive Operations, a neo-Piagetian theory of cognitive development. Stimulus materials were black and white photographs of dogs, cars, and people's faces. The children served as speakers in the communication task and received two forms of feedback from an adult listener: (1) non-specific, verbal feedback of the form "I still don't know which one it is. Is there anything else you can tell me about it?" and (2) if an adequate description was still not given, feedback in the form of specific, visual contrasts. Mental processing capacity and the cognitive style field dependence-independence were assessed in a pretest. Vocabulary repertoires were assessed in a posttest. Age differences in performance on this communcation task appeared to be due to more than just differences in vocabulary and functional adequacy of feature encodings. The mental processing capacity construct proved useful in explaining the older subjects' more consistent application of appropriate executive schemes and minimal interference from affect and field effects. (Author/SB)
Publication Type: Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
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Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Note: Paper is based on author's Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1977; Portions of this paper were presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development (New Orleans, Louisiana, March 17-20, 1977)