ERIC Number: ED060004
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1971
Pages: 108
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
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Perception of Lexical and Structural Ambiguity by Junior and Senior High School Students.
Jurgens, Jeanne Marie
The three concerns of this study were: (1) the ability of students in grades seven, nine, and eleven to recognize ambiguity in sentences at the lexical, surface structural, and underlying structural levels; (2) the relative difficulty of perceiving ambiguity at each of these levels as determined by differential processing times; and (3) the relationship of the ability to recognize ambiguity to other language related abilities. Perception of ambiguity was measured by a sentence-interpretation test administered individually to 30 subjects in each grade. Results showed that, on the basis of mean perception time scores, the order of difficulty for the sentence types was: sentences with lexical ambiguity, with no ambiguity, with underlying ambiguity, and with surface ambiguity. For all sentence types, students in grade seven required longer perception times than did students in grades nine and eleven. It was also found that perception time and correct-response scores were essentially nonrelated, that IQ was the best predictor of perception time scores, and that quality of composition best predicted correct-response scores. (Author/DB)
Descriptors: Ambiguity, Comparative Analysis, High School Students, Junior High School Students, Perception Tests, Semantics, Sentence Structure, Statistical Analysis, Structural Analysis
University Microfilms, A Xerox Company, Dissertation Copies Post Office Box 1764, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 (Order No. 72-3836: MF $4.00, Xerography $10.00)
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Sponsor: N/A
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Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Note: Ph. D. Dissertation, George Peabody College for Teachers