@prefix vivo: . @prefix edm: . @prefix ns0: . @prefix dcterms: . @prefix skos: . vivo:departmentOrSchool "Education, Faculty of"@en, "Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of"@en ; edm:dataProvider "DSpace"@en ; ns0:degreeCampus "UBCV"@en ; dcterms:creator "Greer, Ruth Nancy Elizabeth"@en ; dcterms:issued "2010-02-23T20:10:26Z"@en, "1977"@en ; vivo:relatedDegree "Doctor of Education - EdD"@en ; ns0:degreeGrantor "University of British Columbia"@en ; dcterms:description """The learning of paired associates has been conceptualized (Rohwer, 1973) as the creation of shared meaning for items that are initially disparate by generation of a common event or episode in which the two referents interact. While children of primary school age have been found capable of applying these mental operations when prompted to do so, their spontaneous use has not been found before adolescence, and then only with considerable variability within any one age group. Spontaneous elaboration was characterized as the habitual adoption of an active, planful, strategy-like orientation to the problem posed by later recall. The intent of this research was to examine the degree to which the presence of the hypothetico-deductive and propositional thinking abilities of the Piagetian formal operational period underlie the propensity to spontaneously elaborate. In addition, the structure of the paired associate list allowed for investigation of the developmental course of spontaneous elaboration across levels of noun abstractness and associative meaningfulness. The performance of 277 students in grades 6, 8, 10, and 12 was assessed using the Formal Operations Instrument, a paper and pencil, group administered test developed specifically for this purpose. Items included three conservation tasks (weight, volume, density), combinatorial thinking (Piaget's colorless chemicals task) and two of Peel's (1971) verbal problems of propositional logic. Six subjects of each sex within each grade were then assigned to one of three memory treatment groups: 1) control, given instructions simply to pay attention and do their best to learn the pairs; 2) repetition, instructed to repeat all pairs during study trials; 3) trained, given instructions and practice in generation of both interactive images and meaningful sentences as methods of elaboration. All subjects were required to learn a mixed list of eight concrete and eight abstract noun pairs over three repeated study and test trials. Within each concreteness level, one half of the pairs were of high associative meaningfulness (m) while the other was of low m. Recall results indicated spontaneous use of elaboration for both concrete and abstract pairs by the tenth grade level from the onset of trial 1. There was some evidence of spontaneous elaboration of concrete pairs at the sixth grade level, but not until the third trial. These results did not interact with level of m. Prompted use of elaboration was evident from the performance of the trained groups at all grade levels and with all pairs with one exception, grade 6 students with low m abstract pairs. It was inferred that some minimal level of richness of associative possibilities must be present in the materials for a given child if a semantic coupling is to be created. A modest relationship between formal operational abilities and overall recall performance was found. There was no evidence to support the contention that these abilities are uniquely related to that aspect of performance responsible for spontaneous evocation of elaborative processes, however. Lack of specificity in the processes involved in performance on both the Piagetian and the memory task, as well as difficulties in assessment of formal operational abilities were felt to be primarily responsible for this lack of aptitude-treatment interactions. Implications of this research for the timing of content and of instruction in processing skills within the classroom were discussed."""@en ; edm:aggregatedCHO "https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/20805?expand=metadata"@en ; skos:note "SPONTANEOUS ELABORATION OF PAIRED ASSOCIATES AND FORMAL OPERATIONAL THINKING: A DEVELOPMENTAL ANALYSIS by RUTH NANCY ELIZABETH GREER B.A., Carleton U n i v e r s i t y , 1973 M.A., Univ e r s i t y of B r i t i s h Columbia, 1975 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF EDUCATION (Educational Psychology) We accept t h i s t hesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA June 1977 Ruth Nancy Elizabeth Greer In presenting th i s thes i s in pa r t i a l fu l f i lment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the Univers i ty of B r i t i s h Columbia, I agree that the L ibrary sha l l make it f ree ly ava i lab le for reference and study. I fur ther agree that permission for extensive copying of th is thesis for scho lar ly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representat ives. It is understood that copying or pub l i ca t ion of th is thes is fo r f inanc ia l gain sha l l not be allowed without my written permission. Department of Educational Psychology The Univers i ty of B r i t i s h Columbia 2075 Wesbrook Place Vancouver, Canada V6T 1W5 Abstract The learning of paired associates has been conceptualized (Rohwer, 1973) as the creation of shared meaning for items that are i n i t i a l l y disparate by generation of a common event or episode i n which the two referents i n t e r a c t . While c h i l d r e n of primary school age have been found capable of applying these mental operations when prompted to do so, t h e i r spontaneous use has not been found before adolescence, and then only with considerable v a r i a b i l i t y within any one age group. Spontaneous elaboration was characterized as the habitual adoption of an a c t i v e , p l a n f u l , s t r a t e g y - l i k e o r i e n t a t i o n to the problem posed by l a t e r r e c a l l . The intent of t h i s research was to examine the degree to which the presence of the hypothetico-deductive and p r o p o s i t i o n a l thinking a b i l i t i e s of the Piagetian formal operational period underlie the pro-pensity to spontaneously elaborate. In addition, the structure of the paired associate l i s t allowed for i n v e s t i g a t i o n of the developmental course of spontaneous elaboration across l e v e l s of noun abstractness and a s s o c i a t i v e meaningfulness. The performance of 277 students i n grades 6, 8, 10, and 12 was assessed using the Formal Operations Instrument, a paper and p e n c i l , group administered test developed s p e c i f i c a l l y for t h i s purpose. Items included three conservation tasks (weight, volume, density), combinatorial thinking (Piaget's c o l o r l e s s chemicals task) and two of Peel's (1971) verbal problems of propositional l o g i c . Six subjects of each sex within i i i i i each grade were then assigned to one of three memory treatment groups: 1) c o n t r o l , given i n s t r u c t i o n s simply to pay attention and do th e i r best to learn the p a i r s ; 2) r e p e t i t i o n , i n s t r u c t e d to repeat a l l pairs during study t r i a l s ; 3) trained, given i n s t r u c t i o n s and p r a c t i c e i n generation of both i n t e r a c t i v e images and meaningful sentences as methods of elaboration. A l l subjects were required to learn a mixed l i s t of eight concrete and eight abstract noun p a i r s over three repeated study and test t r i a l s . Within each concreteness l e v e l , one half of the pai r s were of high a s s o c i a t i v e meaningfulness (m) while the other was of low m. Re c a l l r e s u l t s indicated spontaneous use of elaboration for both concrete and abstract p a i r s by the tenth grade l e v e l from the onset of t r i a l 1 . There was some evidence of spontaneous elaboration of concrete p a i r s at the s i x t h grade l e v e l , but not u n t i l the t h i r d t r i a l . These r e s u l t s did not i n t e r a c t with l e v e l of m. Prompted use of elaboration was evident from the performance of the trained groups at a l l grade le v e l s and with a l l p a i r s with one exception, grade 6 students with low m abstract p a i r s . I t was i n f e r r e d that some minimal l e v e l of richness of a s s o c i a t i v e p o s s i b i l i t i e s must be present i n the materials for a given c h i l d i f a semantic coupling i s to be created. A modest r e l a t i o n s h i p between formal operational a b i l i t i e s and o v e r a l l r e c a l l performance was found. There was no evidence to support the conten-t i o n that these a b i l i t i e s are uniquely r e l a t e d to that aspect of perfor-mance responsible for spontaneous evocation of elaborative processes, how-ever. Lack of s p e c i f i c i t y i n the processes involved i n performance on both the Piagetian and the memory task, as well as d i f f i c u l t i e s i n i v assessment of formal operational a b i l i t i e s were f e l t to be p r i m a r i l y responsible for t h i s lack of aptitude-treatment i n t e r a c t i o n s . Implications of t h i s research for the timing of content and of i n s t r u c t i o n i n processing s k i l l s within the classroom were discussed. V TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I. INTRODUCTION 1 A. Mediation Versus Production D e f i c i t 1 B. Elaboration i n Paired Associate Learning 4 C. Development of Spontaneous Elaboration 6 D. The Research Questions 14 I I . LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 15 A. Memory Development 15 B. Memory Development i n Paired Associate Learning. . . 18 C. Memory Development as Cognitive Development! . . . . 24 1. Piaget and Memory 25 2. Memory and Formal Operational Thinking 29 3. Assessment of Formal Thinking 33 I I I . METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS 40 A. Method 40 1. Subjects 40 2. Design 40 B. Materials 41 1. Paired Associate L i s t 41 2. Training M a t e r i a l s . 43 3. Formal Operations Instrument. . . . . . . . . . . 45 a. Conservation 45 b. Combinatorial Thinking 50 c. Propositional Thinking 52 C. Procedure 53 1. Formal Operations Instrument 53 2. Memory Task 54 3. Post-Task Interview 56 IV. RESULTS 59 A. Formal Operations Instrument B. Paired Associate Performance 59 68 v i 1. Data Analysis 68 2. Grade 71 3. Treatment Within Grade 75 a. Grade 6 . 75 b. Grade 8 79 c. Grade 10 80 d. Grade 12 80 e. Govariate Analysis 82 4. Grade Trends Within Treatment Conditions . . . . 82 5. A Further Note on Formal Operational A b i l i t i e s . 87 6. Level of Abstractness 90 7. Sex Within Treatment Within Grade 95 8. Interview Information 95 V. DISGUSSI@Nv.ovs 104 A. Spontaneous Elaboration. . . . . . . . 104 B. Formal Operational Thinking and Spontaneous Elaboration. . . . . 109 C. Tra i n i n g 115 D. General Conclusions and Implications . . . 122 BIBLIOGRAPHY 126 APPENDICES 1.3'5 A. Se l e c t i o n Procedures for Paired Associates 135 B. Student Response Sheets for Formal Operations Instrument 141 C. P i l o t Testing of Formal Operations Instrument. . . . 154 D. Audio Protocol for Presentation of Paired Associates 169 E. A d d i t i o n a l Data 173 v i i LIST OF TABLES Table I Experimental Design 42 II Structure of Paired Associate L i s t 44 III Mean Item Scores of the Formal Operations Instrument by Grade and Sex 60 I1V F-Ratios f o r Grade Trends and for Sex Within Grade E f f e c t s for FOI T o t a l Score . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 V. Product Moment Co r r e l a t i o n C o e f f i c i e n t s Among FOI Item Scores, Age, and FOI Tot a l Score . . . . . . . . 65 VI Factor Analysis of FOI Item Scores f o r 277 Students i n Grades 6, 8, 10, and 12 - A Varimax Rotation 67 VII Mean R e c a l l by Grade, Treatment, T r i a l s , and Item Type . . 69 VIII F-Ratios for Treatment Comparisons Within Grades 76 IX F-Ratios f o r Grade Trends Within Treatment Conditions . . . . 84 X Regression C o e f f i c i e n t s and Associated F-Ratios for Regression Analyses Between FOI Factor Scores and R e c a l l Scores . . 89 XI F-Ratios for Treatment Within Grade Comparisons using O r i g i n a l Scores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 XII F-Ratios f o r Sex Comparisons Within Treatment Conditions Within Grades 96 XIII Relationship Between Perceived and Actual Item R e c a l l D i f f i c u l t y by Treatment, Grade, and Item Type 98 v i i i LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 D i s t r i b u t i o n of FOI Total Score by Grade 64 2 Difference Between Observed and Estimated Item R e c a l l Based on Covariate Model, by Grade and Item Concreteness 74 3 Mean Item R e c a l l by Grade, Treatment Group, T r i a l s and Item Concreteness . 78 4 Grade Trends Within Treatment Conditions . . . . 86 5 Difference i n Mean Re c a l l by Grade as a Function of Level of Abstractness (CL-AH) and Level of Meaningfulness Within Level of Abstractness (CH-CL, AH-AL) 94 6 Reported Strategy Usage by Treatment Group, Item Type, and Grade 1°1 i x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It i s with pleasure that the writer acknowledges her gratitude to those who have contributed i n various ways to th i s work: To Dr. Nancy S. Suzuki, under whose supervision this work was completed. Throughout the course of the doctoral program of which this i n v e s t i g a t i o n was a part, her advice, thoughtful c r i t i c s m , encouragement and u n f a i l i n g support have been invaluable. To Dr. Seong Soo Lee f o r expertise and patience during the data analysis and manuscript preparation. To Drs. P a t r i c i a Kennedy A r l i n and Harr i e t Waters whose h e l p f u l suggestions and continued i n t e r e s t i n the work are g r a t e f u l l y acknow-ledged . To John Taylor f o r h i s en t h u s i a s t i c assistance with the scoring of protocols. To Dr. Charles Ungerleider, and the p a r t i c i p a t i n g p r i n c i p a l s , teachers, and students of the West Vancouver School System whose cooperation and i n t e r e s t made th i s work po s s i b l e . F i n a l l y , to my husband Galen for never doubting. CHAPTER I Introduction It has been well documented (Paivio, 1971) that when the normal adult i s placed i n an i n t e n t i o n a l memory s i t u a t i o n , i t i s the r u l e rather than the exception that a v a r i e t y of coding strategies are brought into play which transform items. The mature learner spontaneously organizes, r e -hearses, elaborates, and generally becomes engaged i n an \" e f f o r t a f t e r meaning\" ( B a r t l e t t , 1932, p. 227) i n an attempt to ensure subsequent r e c a l l . The young c h i l d , by contrast, tends-to respond passively as s t i m u l i f o r l a t e r r e c a l l are being presented, f a i l i n g to deploy even the most rudimen-tary forms of s e l e c t i v e attention (Appel, Cooper, McCarrell, Sims-Knight, Yussen, & F l a v e l l , 1972; Druker & Hagen, 1969; Haith, 1971). As a c h i l d proceeds through the school years he has been found to become more p r o f i -cient i n tasks r e q u i r i n g memory. For example, among the strategies which have been documented to increase i n spontaneous use with age are t a c t i c a l rehearsal during s e r i a l r e c a l l (Belmont & B u t t e r f i e l d , 1971; Brown, 1975; B u t t e r f i e l d , Wambold, & Belmont, 1973; F l a v e l l , Beach, & Chinsky, 1966; F l a v e l l , Fredrichs, & Hoyt, 1970; Hagen, 1972; K a i l , 1976; K e l l a s , McCauley, & McFarland, 1975), imposition of organization through c l u s t e r i n g i n free r e c a l l (Bjorklund, Ornstein, & Haig, 1975; Moely, 1969; Neimark, 1971; Worden, 1975), and generation of a common r e f e r e n t i a l event between pa i r members i n paired associate learning (Kemler & Jusczyk, 1975; Klemt & Anderson, 1973; P a i v i o , 1971; Pressley, 1976; Rohwer, & Bean, 1973), Mediation Versus Production D e f i c i t It has been suggested (Kendler, 1963; Reese, 1962) that the low per-formance of the young c h i l d i n the memory s i t u a t i o n was due to a mediation-a l d e f i c i t . That i s , while the appropriate mediator might be generated by 1. 2. the c h i l d , i t f a i l e d to serve as a mediator for anything during r e c a l l . Considerable evidence e x i s t s to demonstrate that such i s not the case. Given a mediational event or b r i e f i n s t r u c t i o n s i n the appropriate media-t i o n a l s t r a t e g i e s which orient the i n d i v i d u a l to process information seman-t i c a l l y , four and f i v e year o ld normal ch i l d r e n (Brown, 1975; C o r s i n i , Pick •& F l a v e l l , 1968; Levin, McCabe & Bender, 1974; Moely, et a l , 1969; Murphy & Brown, 1975; Y u i l l e & Catchpole, 1974) and mentally retarded c h i l d r e n (Turnure, Buium & Thurlow, 1975) w i l l u t i l i z e and generate mne-monic s t r a t e g i e s to f a c i l i t a t e r e c a l l . An a l t e r n a t i v e to the mediational d e f i c i e n c y hypothesis has been pro-posed by F l a v e l l and h i s associates ( F l a v e l l , et a l , 1966). According to the production deficiency hypothesis, the young c h i l d simply f a i l s to recognize the need f o r , nor spontaneously produces p o t e n t i a l mediators. This point i s well i l l u s t r a t e d by the fact that young c h i l d r e n w i l l success-f u l l y employ a mediational strategy when instructed to do so, but w i l l abandon i t when no longer e x p l i c i t l y required to use i t by the experimen-ter ( F l a v e l l , 1970). This production d e f i c i t has been further elaborated by F l a v e l l (1970) as i n v o l v i n g what he referred to as a \"general\" and a \" s p e c i f i c \" aspect (p. 205). The \" s p e c i f i c \" r e f e r s to the a c q u i s i t i o n and refinement of p a r t i c u l a r cognitive a c t i v i t i e s or operations which underly the use of a v a r i e t y of mnemonic s t r a t e g i e s . The \"general\" aspect r e f e r s to increasing awareness, and propensity on the part of the c h i l d to engage i n 'planning a c t i v i t i e s ' during encoding i n a n t i c i p a t i o n of l a t e r r e c a l l , a c t i v i t i e s which F l a v e l l suggests can be viewed as a kind of \"cognitive executive routine\" (p. 205). This l a t t e r aspect of memory development has more recently been sub-sumed under the general category of \"metamemory\", which i s conceptualized 3. as \"...the i n d i v i d u a l ' s knowledge of and awareness of memory, or of anything pertinent to information storage and r e t r i e v a l . \" ( F l a v e l l & Wellman, 1976, p. 4). In addition to serving the executive function refered to above i n e l i c i t i n g the planning and coordination required of spontaneous a p p l i c a -t i o n of mnemonic s t r a t e g i e s , i t should be noted that metamemory development includes a d d i t i o n a l competencies. For example, s e n s i t i v i t y to d i f f e r e n t memory task requirements, d i s c r i m i n a t i o n of relevant from i r r e l e v a n t stim-ulus a t t r i b u t e s as they influence memory, awareness of memory span l i m i t a -tions both i n time and capacity , as well as s e l e c t i o n of appropriate record-keeping, search, and other r e t r i e v a l s t rategies are a l l conceptual-ized by F l a v e l l and Wellman (1976) to be components of metamemorial devel-opment . Thus, some form of i n t e r n a l cueing which spontaneously activates the 'planning a c t i v i t i e s ' r e ferred to above i s conceptualized as r e s u l t i n g from the development of a metamemory \"executive routine\". The mnemonic t r a i n i n g l i t e r a t u r e with young ch i l d r e n (cf. Brown, 1975; Hagen, 1973; McCabe, Levin, Wolff, 1973; Rohwer, 1973; Y u i l l e & Catchpole, 1973) has made i t apparent that e x t e r n a l l y provided prompts can serve the function that t h i s i n t e r n a l cueing performs. I t i s the development of the processes of t h i s executive control system of metamemory however, which i s conceptualized as providing the c a p a b i l i t i e s for the spontaneous and adaptive mnemonic a c t i v i t i e s that d i s t i n g u i s h the mature memorizer from the young c h i l d . The preceding attention to the executive control system i s not intend-ed to devalue the importance of the development of the cognitive operations required f o r s p e c i f i c mnemonic s t r a t e g i e s . Any p o t e n t i a l memory outcome must more accurately be seen as r e f l e c t i n g an i n t e r r e l a t i o n s h i p of three f a c t o r s : the s i t u a t i o n oir task c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s , the behaviors o r ' s p e c i f i c ' 4. operations a v a i l a b l e i n the r e p e r t o i r e , and the c h i l d ' s awareness or his/her 'metamemory' ( F l a v e l l & Wellman, 1976). Elaboration i n Paired Associate Learning The paired associate paradigm has been used extensively by Rohwer (see 1973 for review) as a v e h i c l e f o r examining developmental changes i n memory. Rohwer (1970, 1973, 1977) has proposed that the coupling that occurs i n -th i s task i s brought about by a process that creates a shared meaning f o r the items. The assumption here i s that what i s stored i n memory concerning i n d i v i d u a l items are components of t h e i r meaning (\"meaning here used to denote abstractions and not words, images or copies of sensory or motor r e a l i t y \" (1973, p. 4)). The content of learning i n the paired associate task i s regarded as \"... the residuum of creating a shared meaning for items that are i n i t i a l l y disparate.\" (p. 4). The process i t s e l f i s thought to consist of generating a common referent for the items to be coupled, through d i r e c t p a r t i c i p a t i o n i n or observation of such an i n t e r a c t i o n , or through the recombining of e x i s t i n g memories (Rohwer, 1977). When the pa i r i s comprised of unrelated objects or items, the common referent w i l l t y p i c a l l y be an 'event' i n which the two separate referents i n t e r a c t (1973). One member of the p a i r can then serve as a cue for the j o i n t r e f e r e n t i a l event i t s e l f , and the second member of the p a i r can be e a s i l y r e t r i e v e d by v i r t u e of being an inseparable part of t h i s shared meaning. Rohwer (1977) has used the term 'elaboration' to r e f e r to these \"...mental operations which constuct an event or se r i e s of events that incorporate otherwise disparate e n t i t i e s and actions.\" (p. 1). The developmental progression i n the conditions necessary to activa t e the elaboration process has been examined i n some d e t a i l by Rohwer and 5. others. In t h i s regard, Rohwer (1973) r e f e r s to f i v e l e v e l s of e x p l i c i t n e s s of prompt which can be provided by the experimental s i t u a t i o n and which can influence the occurance of elaborative processes. The f i r s t of these i s the antagonistic prompt which d i r e c t s the learner to engage i n r e p e t i t i o n , counting, or other a c t i v i t y which w i l l preclude the generation of a common r e f e r e n t i a l event, and thus i s taken to represent a baseline condition. The second i s the minimal prompt, also refered to as the neutral or control condition. In t h i s s i t u a t i o n i n s t r u c t i o n s simply to learn or memorize the material are given. With the e x p l i c i t prompt i n s t r u c t i o n s are given regard-ing a process which might be used by the subject while attempting to learn the pa i r s ( i . e . , create a story, make up a p i c t u r e i n your mind, e t c . ) . The augmented e x p l i c i t prompt provides the subject with the r e f e r e n t i a l event ( i . e . , a p i c t u r e of two objects i n t e r a c t i n g , a sentence). The f i n a l and most e x p l i c i t type of prompt i s the maximally e x p l i c i t . In t h i s condi-t i o n the r e f e r e n t i a l event i s enacted d i r e c t l y i n the presence of the learner. With development the e x p l i c i t n e s s of the prompt necessary to ac t i v a t e elaboration has been found to decrease. Two p a r t i c u l a r periods of s h i f t have been found. P r i o r to 5 or 6 years of age no di f f e r e n c e has been found between the e x p l i c i t and the minimal prompt conditions (Jensen & Rohwer, 1965; Rohwer, 1970; Wolff & Levin, 1972). Even though these young children are given i n s t r u c t i o n s concerning the procedures they might use to generate a common r e f e r e n t i a l event, they are unable to do so unless the event i s enacted before them. A f t e r 7 years of age, however, the e x p l i c i t prompt has generally been found to r e s u l t i n learning equal to that under augment-ed e x p l i c i t and maximally e x p l i c i t prompts ( Y u i l l e & Catchpole, 1973). 6 . P e r f o r m a n c e u n d e r t h e m i n i m a l p r o m p t c o n t i n u e s t o b e n o b e t t e r t h a n t h a t u n d e r t h e a n t a g o n i s t i c p r o m p t d u r i n g t h e c h i l d h o o d y e a r s , h o w e v e r ( R o h w e r & B e a n , 1 9 7 3 ; R o h w e r & G u y , 1 9 7 3 ; S u z u k i & R o h w e r , 1 9 6 9 ) . T h e n e x t p e r i o d o f n o t i c a b l e c h a n g e o c c u r s d u r i n g t h e a d o l e s c e n t y e a r s , a c h a n g e w h i c h R o h w e r ( 1 9 7 3 ) h a s r e f e r r e d t o a s t h e d e v e l o p m e n t o f a ' s t r a -t e g y - l i k e o r i e n t a t i o n ' . I t i s m a r k e d b y a n i n c r e a s e i n p e r f o r m a n c e u n d e r m i n i m a l p r o m p t i n g e q u a l t o t h a t o f t h e m o r e e x p l i c i t p r o m p t g r o u p s ( G r e e r & S u z u k i , 1 9 7 6 ; R o h w e r & B e a n , 1 9 7 3 ) . T h e i m p l i c a t i o n d r a w n i s t h a t t h e r e i s a n i n c r e a s i n g l y s p o n t a n e o u s g e n e r a t i o n o f e l a b o r a t i v e e v e n t s w i t h a g e , t h e c r i t i c a l p e r i o d o f c h a n g e f r o m n o n - p r o d u c t i o n t o s p o n t a n e o u s p r o d u c t i o n f a l l i n g s o m e w h e r e b e t w e e n t h e s i x t h a n d e l e v e n t h g r a d e . I n s u m m a r y , t h e p e r f o r m a n c e o f t h e c h i l d b e t w e e n t h e a g e s o f f i v e a n d f o u r t e e n w o u l d i n d i c a t e t h a t t h e m e n t a l o p e r a t i o n s r e q u i r e d t o p r o d u c e a n e l a b o r a t i v e e v e n t a r e a v a i l a b l e b u t a r e d e p e n d e n t u p o n e x t e r n a l c u e i n g t o b e c o m e a c t i v a t e d . T h e o l d e r a d o l e s c e n t w i l l s p o n t a n e o u s l y c u e t h e s e m e n t a l o p e r a t i o n s i n t h e a b s e n c e o f s p e c i f i c e x t e r n a l p r o m p t s t o d o s o s u c h t h a t h i s p e r f o r m a n c e d o e s n o t d i f f e r f r o m p e e r s g i v e n m o r e e x p l i c i t e x p e r -i m e n t a l s u p p o r t . R e r - p h r a s e d i n F l a v e l l ' s t e r m i n o l o g y ( 1 9 7 0 ) , a t a p p r o x i -m a t e l y t h e a g e o f f i v e t h e c h i l d d e v e l o p e s t h e ' s p e c i f i c ' c o g n i t i v e o p e r a -t i o n s u n d e r l y i n g e l a b o r a t i o n b u t t h e d e v e l o p m e n t o f t h e ' g e n e r a l c o g n i t i v e e x e c u t i v e r o u t i n e ' r e s p o n s i b l e f o r t h e i n t e r n a l c u e i n g o f t h e s e p r o c e s s e s d o e s n o t e m e r g e i n p e r f o r m a n c e u n t i l t h e a d o l e s c e n t p e r i o d . D e v e l o p m e n t o f S p o n t a n e o u s E l a b o r a t i o n S i n c e t h e s e i n i t i a l r e p o r t s , a n u m b e r o f t h e o r e t i c a l i s s u e s o f c o n c e r n h a v e b e e n r a i s e d w i t h r e s p e c t t o t h e d e v e l o p m e n t o f s p o n t a n e o u s e l a b o r a t i o n d u r i n g a d o l e s c e n c e . F i r s t , a t t e m p t s t o r e p l i c a t e t h e t r e n d n o t e d b y R o h w e r 7. and Bean (1973) have been Inconsistent. While Greer and Suzuki (1976) r e -ported success i n reproducing the o r i g i n a l trend with concrete p a i r s , r e -peated attempts by Rohwer and h i s associates (Rohwer, Raines, Eoff & Wagner, 1977) have generally met with f a i l u r e . Second, the r e s u l t s of t h i s more recent research of Rohwer's (1977) plus that reported by Pressley and Levin, (1977) have made i t apparent that age alone does not adequately account for the v a r i a b i l i t y i n elaborative propensity during the adolescent period. In addition, neither I.Q. test scores nor measures of sc h o l a s t i c achievement have served to d i f f e r e n t i a t e producers from non-producers at any one age l e v e l , although l e v e l of per-formance on a previous paired associate task does so (Rohwer, et a l . 1977). Third, q u a l i t a t i v e differences i n the c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s of noun p a i r s have been found to influence the degree to which t h i s propensity i s man-i f e s t i n performance. For example, low stimulus term frequency (Klent & Anderson, 1973) has been found to decrease the incidence of spontaneous elaboration i n adults, while low p a i r frequency has been l e s s systematic i n i t s influence on performance of adolescents (Rohwer, et a l , 1977). Evidence of a ho r i z o n t a l decalage i n age of onset of spontaneous elabora-t i o n as a function of pa i r abstractness has also been reported (Greer & Suzuki, 1976). However, l e v e l of abstractness was not completely disentan-gled from l e v e l of as s o c i a t i v e meaningfulness, making i t unclear which v a r i a b l e accounted for t h i s pattern. Fourth, the v a l i d i t y of the assumption that the r e p e t i t i o n group r e a l l y constitutes a s u f f i c i e n t baseline of performance against which to assess spontaneous elaboration by the minimal prompt group has been questioned (Greer & Suzuki, 1976; Rohwer, et a l , 1977). For example, some antagonis-8. t i c a l l y prompted subjects i n the Greer and Suzuki study reported use of other mnemonic str a t e g i e s despite i n s t r u c t i o n s to repeat p a i r s c o v e r t l y . It i s apparent from the foregoing that further research i s required i f both the v a l i d i t y and the nature of the parameters i n f l u e n c i n g the developmental trend i n spontaneous elaboration i d e n t i f i e d by Rohwer and Bean (1973) are to be established. Five issues have evolved from the pre-vious i n v e s t i g a t i o n s of t h i s form of memory development which w i l l be addressed by t h i s research. The f i r s t three of these concerned p r i m a r i l y the development of the \"executive c o n t r o l processes' responsible f o r the propensity to spontaneously elaborate. The l a s t two issues sought to exa-mine further task v a r i a b l e s p o t e n t i a l l y i n f l u e n t i a l to the a p p l i c a t i o n of elaborative processes, when prompted. F i r s t , further v e r i f i c a t i o n of t h i s planfulness i n a memory task was sought by attempting to r e p l i c a t e the developmental trend during adoles-cence i n spontaneous use of elaboration which had been found by Rohwer and Bean (1973) and Greer and Suzuki (1976) but which had taken.on a rather i l l u s i v e q u a l i t y i n other research (Pressley & Levin,.1977; Rohwer, et a l , 1977). In addition, overt rather than covert rehearsal of the p a i r s during a l l interitem study i n t e r v a l s was required of the subjects i n the antagon-i s t i c a l l y prompted group i n an attempt to further insure i n h i b i t i o n of elaborative processes. The second issue concerned an exploration of the extent to which cognitive developmental changes during adolescence accounted f o r the v a r i -ance i n observed elaborative propensity. I t was apparent from the e x i s t i n g research that age, I.Q. scores, and measures of s c h o l a s t i c achievement did not s a t i s f a c t o r i l y account for t h i s variance. From the Piagetian p o s i t i o n 9. (Piaget & Inhelder, 1973) memory should appropriately be viewed as the a p p l i c a t i o n of the operational structures of the i n t e l l i g e n c e to the task of retention and reconstruction of the past. Thus, memory task performance w i l l r e f l e c t the developmental status of the cognitive system as a whole. Cognitive developmental changes during the adolescent period appear to be the next l o g i c a l step i n seeking to i d e n t i f y the source of t h i s variance i n elaborative propensity. In Rohwer's early discussion of elaboration (1973, p. 8) he makes reference to cognitive developmental changes of a Piagetian form as being implicated i n the memory performance of adolescents, but (to the writer's knowledge) t h i s a s s o c i a t i o n has as yet not been sub-jected to a c r i t i c a l empirical t e s t . S p e c i f i c a l l y , the present research examined the degree to which the problem so l v i n g and pr o p o s i t i o n a l thinking s k i l l s of the Piagetian formal operational period were responsible for the differences i n elaborative propensity during adolescence. These operational changes described by Inhelder and Piaget (1958) as being associated with the formal period ap-peared to be p a r t i c u l a r l y , relevant, given the nature of the competencies which are thought to be associated with the development of \"executive c o n t r o l \" . That i s , i t i s the tendency to approach the memory task i n a problem-solving fashion, to perceive the task as one which requires the ac t i v e generation and t e s t i n g of multiple elaborative a l t e r n a t i v e s , and the a b i l i t y to coordinate multiple mental operations which t h i s executive con-t r o l allows f o r , and which separates the spontaneous from the prompted elaborator. The p a r a l l e l between t h i s type of competency and that of the hypothetico-deductive processing s k i l l s of the formal operational period made t h i s a p o t e n t i a l l y f r u i t f u l r e l a t i o n s h i p to inves t i g a t e . 10. The t h i r d issue concerned c l a r i f i c a t i o n of the influence of two task v a r i a b l e s , a s s o c i a t i v e meaningfulness (m) and abstractness. Rohwer (1973), i n discussing the elaborative process, stated that the creation of a seman-t i c r e l a t i o n s h i p between the two members of a p a i r i s dependent to some extent upon the v a r i e t y of meanings stored i n memory which are associated with each: item i n i t i a l l y . Klemt and Anderson (1973) and Rohwer, et a l (1973) employed frequency counts as an index of richness of a s s o c i a t i v e p o s s i b i l i t i e s . However, a more d i r e c t measure of t h i s dimension would be a s s o c i a t i v e meaningfulness. Through the use of nouns for which adolescent m norms have previously been tabulated (Greer and Suzuki, 1976), i t was possible to systematically examine the influence of t h i s v a r i a b l e . Level of abstractness remained a v a r i a b l e of i n t e r e s t i n the present i n v e s t i g a t i o n of elaboration propensity, given the h o r i z o n t a l d^calage observed previously by Greer and Suzuki (1976). Borrowing a concept from the l e v e l s of analysis model of memory proposed by Craik and Lockhart V (1972), one of the major determinants of depth of processing (and hence of l a t e r r e c a l l ) i s assumed to be the degree to which material i s compatible with e x i s t i n g cognitive structures. One of the c e n t r a l advances of Piage-t i a n formal operational thinking i s the a b i l i t y to deal with abstract con-cept as the elements of thinking (Inhelder and Piaget, 1958). Rohwer (1977) has also made reference to the idea that with development elaboration be- % comes incr e a s i n g l y mental and i s l e s s dependent upon the d i r e c t i n t e r a c t i v e form. Abstract noun p a i r s which are devoid of external referents would appear to r e l y more heavily upon t h i s more purely mental form of elabora-t i o n than would concrete p a i r s , and may consequently evidence a somewhat d i f f e r e n t developmental trend i n onset of spontaneous elaboration. It became of t h e o r e t i c a l i n t e r e s t to re-examine the abstractness-concretness dimension both by i t s e l f and i n i n t e r a c t i o n with cognitive developmental ind i c e s . The structure of the paired associate l i s t allowed for t h i s type of examination while simultaneously c o n t r o l l i n g f or m within the two l e v e l s of abstractness. The fourth issue concerned the g e n e r a l i z a b i l i t y of the elaborative prompts given to an i n d i v i d u a l during t r a i n i n g to material of d i f f e r e n t l e v e l s of meaningfulness and concreteness. A body of l i t e r a t u r e e x i s t s to demonstrate that young c h i l d r e n of f i v e years and older are capable of performing the s p e c i f i c cognitive operations necessary to elaborate when given e x p l i c i t prompting to form an i n t e r a c t i v e image or to embed the noun pair i n a meaningful phrase of sentence. This research, however, has concentrated on the demonstration of responsiveness to t r a i n i n g and i n s t r u c -tions only under the very favorable conditions of highly f a m i l i a r and mean-i n g f u l concrete nouns and has not examined performance across a range of item d i f f i c u l t y . In t h e i r discussion of developmental stage t r a n s i t i o n s , F l a v e l l and Wohlwill (1969) have proposed that asynchrony i n achievement across l e v e l s of task d i f f i c i i l t y may be found as operational competency only gradually becomes consolidated i n performance. A s i m i l a r point was made above concerning the elaboration of concrete versus abstract p a i r s . The appropriateness of t h i s analysis to the elaboration of paired associates was examined i n t h i s research by comparing r e c a l l l e v e l s of trained students over material which represented somewhat of a continuum of item d i f f i c u l t y . A f i n a l issue addressed i n t h i s research involved the a b i l i t y of e x p l i c i t l y prompted preadolescents and adolescents to vary s t r a t e g i e s as c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s of the material to be learned changed. A mature i n d i v i d u a l 12. responds to a mixed task with a spontaneous and adaptive change i n prepar-atory a c t i v i t y (Reitman, 1970). It was of i n t e r e s t to determine i f c h i l d -ren trained i n more than one strategy (imaginal and verbal) would respond to the requirements of the mixed l i s t of concrete and abstract paired a s s o c i a t i e s with both s t r a t e g i e s , or would perseverate i n the use of only one strategy throughout. According to Paivio's dual coding hypothesis (1969; 1971), both a v i s u a l and a verbal system are a v a i l a b l e for the encoding and storage of information i n memory. The c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s of the task and the material to be learned can be varied such that one system i s more l i k e l y to be employed than the other. For example, the following information regarding latency of production of i n t e r a c t i n g images versus verbal elaborations of concrete and abstract p a i r s has been documented: Concrete Pairs Abstract Pairs Grade 6 Imaginal ( Y u i l l e & P r i t c h a r d , 1969) Verbal (Greer & Suzuki, 1976) Adults Imaginal (Paivio, 1975) Verbal (Paivio, 1975) 9 seconds 12 seconds 10 seconds (?) 10 seconds (?) 3 seconds 3 seconds 12 seconds 3 seconds The question mark beside the data for grade 6 students for verbal elabor-ation i s to denote the fact that t h i s research (Greer & Suzuki, 1976) was not s p e c i f i c a l l y designed to provide latency information. It did in d i c a t e , however, that approximately 60 percent of the s i x t h grade c h i l d r e n trained to embed concrete and abstract p a i r s within a meaningful sentence reported success i n doing so within a 10 second i n t e r v a l . Extrapolating from the 13. information provided above, students from s i x t h grade and older, given a mixed l i s t of concrete and abstract p a i r s , a pace rate of 10 seconds, and t r a i n i n g i n both imaginal and verbal elaboration strategies should not express any p a r t i c u l a r preference for one processing mode over the other for concrete p a i r s . For the abstract p a i r s , however, i t would be predicted that verbal s t r a t e g i e s would have a greater p r o b a b i l i t y of leading to suc-c e s s f u l elaboration, given the 10 second pace rate. In summary then, the dual coding hypothesis would predict equivalent use of the two modes of elaboration for concrete p a i r s , but p r e f e r e n t i a l use of the verbal mode f o r abstract p a i r s . It should be noted that Rohwer's (1973) elaboration hypothesis i s ; b a s i c a l l y amodal, placing\" the emphasis on v a r i a t i o n s due to prompt e x p l i c -itness rather than to modality d i f f e r e n c e s , \"...a single-process approach, as exemplified i n the elaboration hypothesis, may be more h e u r i s t i c than a multi-process approach f o r advancing toward an understanding of the major determinants of learning e f f i c i e n c y i n childhood and adolescence\" (p. 53). Various modes or prompt types are simply seen as more of l e s s e f f e c t i v e i n cueing semantic overlap. To date, however, the elaboration hypothesis has been applied to developmental changes i n performance with highly concrete objects and/or nouns, a class of s t i m u l i which the dual-coding hypothesis would predict to be equally amenable to verbal and imaginal processing modes. Pattern of reported elaborative strategy usage was f e l t to be a pertinent question to address i n the context of t h i s i n -v e s t i g a t i o n of elaborative processing as performance was examined with a mixed l i s t . By t r a i n i n g subjects i n both verbal and imaginal elaborative modes and then examining the reported usage of these s t r a t e g i e s i n response 14. to the mixed l i s t , t h i s issue could be examined. Translating these issues into research questions, the following were examined by the present research: (1) During l a t e r childhood and adolescent period ( i . e . , grades 6, 8, 10, 12) i s there a trend toward increasing use of spontaneous elaboration during paired associate learning? (2) Does elaborative propensity within any grade l e v e l i n t e r a c t with: a. l e v e l of abstractness of p a i r s to be learned? b. l e v e l of a s s o c i a t i v e meaningfulness (m) within l e v e l of abstractness? (3) If evidence of spontaneous elaboration i s found, i s there a r e l a -tionship between formal operational a b i l i t i e s and spontaneous elaboration such that i f variance accounted for by the former i s s t a t i s t i c a l l y removed, the variance by grade i n the l a t t e r i s also removed? (4) Does t r a i n i n g i n imaginal and verbal mnemonic strategies improve r e c a l l performance over that of a group instru c t e d to use r e p e t i t i o n : a. at a l l four grade l e v e l s ? b. over both high and low l e v e l s of abstractness of nouns to be learned? c. over both high and low l e v e l s of a s s o c i a t i v e meaningfulness? (5) Does frequency of reported use of elaborative and non-elaborative s t r a t e g i e s by trained subjects vary as a function of: a. grade? b. l e v e l of abstractness of nouns to be learned? c. l e v e l of meaningfulness? CHAPTER II L i t e r a t u r e Review and Th e o r e t i c a l Background Memory Development: A wide v a r i e t y of processes and tasks are subsumed under the general l a b e l of memory development research (Reese, 1973). In her examination of t h i s t o p i c , Brown (1975) provided a framework within which to view the var-ious aspects of t h i s research. Within her a n a l y s i s , memory development can f i r s t be seen as the development of \"knowing\" i n general, or of the semantic and conceptual memory which underlies a l l cognitive a c t i v i t y , a d i v i s i o n analogous to what Piaget (Piaget & Inhelder, 1973) have refered to as \"memory i n the wider sense','. The second category Brown has c a l l e d \"knowing how to know\" and r e f e r s to the i n d i v i d u a l ' s r e p e r t o i r e of mnemonic str a t e g i e s i n the form of cog-n i t i v e operations which can be applied to transform sensory data at input or a s s i s t i n l a t e r r e t r i e v a l . The course of the development of t h i s form of operational competence has generally been examined using a t r a i n i n g or i n s t r u c t i o n a l paradigm. For example, success i n t r a i n i n g of c l u s t e r i n g techniques during free r e c a l l has been reported with preschool (Murphy & Brown, 1975) and primary grade c h i l d r e n (Bjorklund, Ornstein, & Haig, 1975; Worden, 1975). The assumption i n t h i s research i s that while the young c h i l d may not evoke these st r a t e g i e s of h i s own accord unless s p e c i f i c a l l y cued to do so, he does have the operational competence required to carry them out. The t h i r d category referred to by Brown was termed \"knowing about know-ing\", or what has more recently been referred to as metamemory ( F l a v e l l and Wellman, 1976). It i s the development of a type of executive control system 15. 16. which, among other things, i s thought to account for the emergence of spontaneous a p p l i c a t i o n of a v a i l a b l e mnemonics refered to i n the preceding paragraph. Evidence of the development of t h i s a c t i v e and p l a n f u l approach to tasks r e q u i r i n g memory during the intermediate school years has been found for such s t r a t e g i e s as deployment of s e l e c t i v e attention (Appel, Cooper, McCarrel, Sims-Knight, Yussen, & F l a v e l l , 1972; Hagen, 1972; Hagen & Hale, 1973), t a c t i c a l rehearsal ( B u t t e r f i e l d , Wambold & Belmont, 1973; Hagen, 1972; K a i l , 1976; K e l l a s , McCauley, & McFarland, 1975) and progress-ive elaboration (Brown, 1975) during s e r i a l r e c a l l , and c l u s t e r i n g during free r e c a l l (Moely, et a l , 1969; Neimark, 1971), i n addition to the paired associate evidence referred to below. F l a v e l l (1970; 1971) has referred to t h i s i n a b i l i t y of young c h i l d r e n to spontaneously generate e f f e c t i v e mediational strategies as a production deficiency. One component of the growth away from t h i s state of production d e f i c i e n c y i s the development of a general tendency toward planfulness, or a propensity f o r \"...searching the repetoire for a c t i v i t i e s to perform now, the performance of which has no immediate relevance but w i l l f a c i l i t a t e some other a c t i v i t y subsequently\" ( F l a v e l l , 1970, p. 40). It should be stressed that i n addition to the development of t h i s type of executive control i s also the complementary development and refinement of the cogni-t i v e operations which underly the mnemonic a c t i v i t i e s required for e f f e c t i v e performance i n various r e c a l l tasks. It i s to be expected that there w i l l be periods of production i n e f f i c i e n c y , the t r a n s i t i o n from non-producer to producer being conceptual-ized as a gradual rather than an all-or-none process ( F l a v e l l , 1970). For example, rehearsal errors during serial:-tasks .(Kellas, McCauley, McFarland, 17. 1975), incomplete c l u s t e r i n g during free r e c a l l (Bjorklund, Ornstein, & Haig, 1975), and generation of sub-optimal mediators during paired a s s o c i -ate learning (Jensen & Rohwer, 1965) could a l l be viewed as examples of production i n e f f i c i e n c y . In addition to periods of production i n e f f i c i e n c y , one might also an t i c i p a t e some form of ho r i z o n t a l decalages i n performance for a given i n d i v i d u a l . That i s , i n t r a i n d i v i d u a l differences may be noted across ma-t e r i a l s of d i f f e r i n g l e v e l s of f a m i l i a r i t y or meaningfulness as the cogni^ t i v e operations underlying the mnemonic acquired increasing scope of gener-a l i t y and a p p l i c a b i l i t y . F l a v e l l and Wohlwill (1969) have refered to t h i s type of 'operations by materials' i n t e r a c t i o n . In t h e i r a n a l y s i s , the p r o b a b i l i t y that cognitive competency w i l l be f u l l y expressed i n performance w i l l be a j o i n t consequence of the degree to which the necessary operations are f u l l y established and the degree to which the a t t r i b u t e s of the task themselves ( i . e . manner of presentation; number of i r r e l e v a n t v a r i a b l e s ; f a m i l i a r i t y of materials; etc) allow for optimal performance. Giving t h i s concept the mathematical i n t e r p r e t a t i o n proposed by Pas-cual-Leone (1969), performance i n tasks r e q u i r i n g the same l o g i c a l s truc-tures w i l l d i f f e r within any one c h i l d (1) i f the information processing demands (as determined by the number of f i g u r a t i v e and operative schemes which must be coordinated simultaneously) d i f f e r , and (2) i f t h i s number exceeds the maximum processing space a v a i l a b l e to the c h i l d f o r one task but not for the other. For example, Prawat and C o n c e l l i (1976) examined the use of constructive memory i n seven-year-olds. This paradigm examines the tendency of the i n d i v i d u a l to f a l s e l y recognize as f a m i l i a r correct l o g i c a l inferences which are implied i n the meaning but not e x p l i c i t l y 18. stated i n a s e r i e s of statements. Some competence with t h i s i n f e r e n t i a l memory a c t i v i t y was found when three statements were used. If four or f i v e o r i g i n a l statements had been used, however, i t i s possible that t h i s increas-ed processing demand would r e s u l t i n f a i l u r e for ch i l d r e n of t h i s age whose maximum processing space i s three schemes (Case, 1970). Thus, although the l o g i c a l competence would be within the rep e t o i r e , the c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s of the task i t s e l f would r e s u l t i n f a i l u r e - l i k e performance. In summary, memory development from the production d e f i c i t approach could be chacterized as the development of the a b i l i t y to use and the spon-taneous use of a v a r i e t y of mnemonic routines across a v a r i e t y of task c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s . Memory Development In Paired Associate Learning: Examples of t h i s t r a n s i t i o n from non-production to production of e f f e c t i v e memorial strategies i n the paired associate task have been report-ed i n the research l i t e r a t u r e . Rohwer (1973) has proposed that the learning of a paired associate be conceptualized as the generation of a shared mean-ing or semantic coupling between two i n i t i a l l y disparate items. The assump-t i o n here i s that what i s stored i n memory for each i n d i v i d u a l item are components of meaning i n a form analogous to conceptual a t t r i b u t e s . The process of elaboration i t s e l f i s thought to consist of generating a common referent f or the items to be coupled by recombining e x i s t i n g memories (either by d i r e c t involvement of observation of the enactment of an i n t e r a c t i o n , or i n a purely mental form) of through the generation of some 'event' or 'episode' i n which the two separate referents i n t e r a c t (Rohwer, 1973). One member of the p a i r can then serve as a r e t r i e v a l cue for the j o i n t r e f e r e n t i a l event. The second member can be then e a s i l y r e t r i e v e d by 1 9 . v i r t u e of being an inseparable part of t h i s shared meaning. Research evidence indicates that with age there i s a decrease i n the e x p l i c i t n e s s of the prompt required to i n i t i a t e t h i s semantic processing (Rohwer, 1973). It has been repeatedly demonstrated that very young c h i l d -ren are able to use experimenter provided elaborations of both the verbal and imaginal form (e.g. Holyoak, Hogeterp, & Y u i l l e , 1972; Rohwer, 1967; . 1970; 1973), suggesting that a mediational d e f i c i t (Reese, 1962) i s not the problem. Evidence of a production d e f i c i t i n both the tendency to spontan-eously produce elaborative events, and i n the operational c a p a b i l i t y to do so during the pre-school and early school years has been documented. Dealing f i r s t with the operational competency involved i n elaboration of paired associates, there i s some inconsistency i n the l i t e r a t u r e concern-ing the operational c a p a b i l i t i e s of c h i l d r e n i n the four to s i x year range to respond to prompts to generate e i t h e r imaginal elaboration i n the form of i n t e r a c t i n g images or verbal elaboration by embedding the p a i r i n a meaningful phrase or sentence. Y u i l l e and Catchpole (1973) report c h i l d r e n as young as f i v e years of age can benefit from i n s t r u c t i o n s to generate i n t e r a c t i n g imagery to the extent that performance i s equivalent to groups having experimenter provided i n t e r a c t i o n s . Others (Montague, 1970; Rohwer & Eo f f , 1973; Wolff & Levin, 1973) have f a i l e d to f i n d any benefit of t h i s form of i n s t r u c t i o n for c h i l d r e n of t h i s age. By age seven a f a c i l i t a t i n g e f f e c t equivalent to experimenter provided imaginal i n t e r a c t i o n s are gener-a l l y reported (Kemler & Jusczyk, 1975; Levin, Davidson, Wolff, & C i t r o n , 1973; Rohwer & E o f f , 1973; Wolff & Levin, 1972). However, addition of man-i p u l a t i o n of the object p a i r s has been found to f a c i l i t a t e the s p e c i f i c production d e f i c i t i n the four and f i v e year olds i n some studies (McCabe, 20. Levin, & Wolff, 1973; Wolff & Levin, 1972; Wolff, Levin & Longobardi, 1972) but not i n others (Levin, McCabe & Bender, 1974; Y u i l l e & Catchpole, 1973). Rohwer (1977) has observed that \"In the course of development, there i s a change i n the balance between elaboration through i n t e r a c t i o n and purely mental elaboration, i n that the early dominance of the i n t e r a c t i v e form gives way more and more to the mental form\", (p. 10). For some f i v e and s i x year olds at l e a s t , a semantic coupling did not obtain without the op-portunity to d i r e c t l y enact the i n t e r a c t i o n . There i s also evidence that a b i l i t y to respond to prompts to generate i n t e r a c t i n g images continues to be refined during the l a t e r school years. For example, Y u i l l e and Pritchard (1967) found that both latency of imagery production and number of Images s u c c e s s f u l l y generated increased from grade 2 to grade 6. Begg and Anderson (1976) also report that a b i l i t y to use t h i s form of elaboration increased from grade 2 to grade 6. While trained c h i l d r e n at both grade l e v e l s exceeded performance of untrained peers, grade 6 trained c h i l d r e n also exceeded grade 2 trained c h i l d r e n . Examination of the a b i l i t i e s of chi l d r e n i n the four to seven age range to carry out the s p e c i f i c operations involved i n the generation of verbal elaborators i n response to i n s t r u c t i o n s have been s i m i l a r l y inconclu-sive. While some research has found c h i l d r e n i n t h i s age range improve t h e i r r e c a l l performance when given i n s t r u c t i o n s to elaborate v e r b a l l y (Kemler & Jusczyk, 1975; Levin, Davidson, Wolff & Cit r o n , 1973; Levin, McCabe & Bender, 1974; McCabe, Levin & Wolff, 1973), others have not found t h i s to be the case (Buium & Turnure, i n press; Jensen & Rohwer, 1965; Martin, 1967; Rohwer, 1970; Turnure, Buium, & Thurlow, 1975). I t would seem that the d i f f i c u l t y of chi l d r e n i n t h i s age range i s better characterized 21. as one of production i n e f f i c i e n c y rather than as production d e f i c i e n t i n a b i l i t i e s to employ t h i s form of elaboration, however. As reports of Jensen and Rohwer (1965) show, chi l d r e n of t h i s age produce \"sentence fragments\" or \"conjunctives\" when t o l d to generate a sentence, which do not function as e f f e c t i v e r e f e r e n t i a l events denoting shared meaning. Recent research by Turnure and h i s associates (Buium & Turnure, i n press; Turnure & Buium, 1975; Turnure, Buium, & Thurlow, 1975) has examined the use of interroga-t i v e s as prompts for verbal elaboration i n both normal pre-schoolers and mentally retarded c h i l d r e n . When these children are prompted by \"why\" and \"what\" questions concerning the noun pai r s r e c a l l c o n s i s t e n t l y exceeds both 'sentence generate' and 'sentence provided' groups. In addition, errors made by ch i l d r e n prompted i n t e r r o g a t i v e l y tend to be predominantly semantic as opposed to non-semantic, suggesting that c h i l d r e n of t h i s age l e v e l are capable of performing the cognitive operations involved i n elaborative pro-cessing at the semantic l e v e l i f given appropriate prompts. In summary, t h i s research concerned with the operational c a p a b i l i t i e s involved i n \"knowing how to know\" indicates production i n e f f i c i e n c y during the early school years i n response to both imaginal and verbal elaborative prompts, with increasing e f f i c i e n c y i n the generation of r e f e r e n t i a l events through the middle school years. There i s also evidence to suggest that these s p e c i f i c a b i l i t i e s involved i n elaboration continue to be refined and to achieve broader f i e l d s of gener a l i z a t i o n during l a t e r adolescence. For example, grade 6 students have been found capable of elaboration of concrete nouns when prompted to do so but a considerable number were not able to elaborate abstract p a i r s , unlike students i n grades 8 and 10 (Greer and Suzuki, 1976). 22. The development of the 'general' metamemory component as evidenced by spontaneous unprompted elaboration has also been examined. The accum-ulated research indicates lack of spontaneous elaboration to either the verbal (Kemler & Jusczyk, 1975; Pressley & Levin, 1977; Peterson, 1974; Rohwer & Bean, 1973; Rohwer, Raines, Eoff, & Wagner, 1977) or imaginal prompts (Begg & Anderson, 1976; Clarkson, Haggith, Tierney, & Kobasigawa, 1973; Greer & Suzuki, 1976; Levin & Kaplan, 1972; Rohwer & E o f f , 1973) p r i o r to the eighth grade l e v e l . The propensity to spontaneously elaborate when given no s p e c i f i c i n s t r u c t i o n s with regard to strategy was f i r s t exa-mined by Rohwer and Bean (1973). Children from grades 1, 3, 6, 8, and 11 were given a 36-item paired associate l i s t of concrete nouns. The p e r f o r -mance of four experimental groups were examined: an antagonistic prompt group was instructed to repeat each p a i r ; a minimal prompt group was simply t o l d to t r y t h e i r best to learn the p a i r s ; an e x p l i c i t prompt group was i n -structed to form and utter aloud sentences containing the p a i r s ; and an augmented e x p l i c i t prompt group was provided with a sentence which contained the p a i r s . The r e s u l t s indicated that the e f f e c t of minimal prompting r e l a t i v e to either of the sentence conditions or the r e p e t i t i o n condition changed sharply with age. At the f i r s t , t h i r d , and s i x t h grade l e v e l s , the e f f e c t of minimal prompting was i n d i s t i n g u i s h a b l e from that of the antagonistic prompt; at the 11th grade l e v e l i t was equivalent to e x p l i c i t and augmented e x p l i c i t prompt conditions and at the eighth grade l e v e l , i t s e f f e c t was midway between these two extremes. The i m p l i c a t i o n drawn was that there i s i n c r e a s i n g l y spontaneous generation of elaboration with age, the c r i t i c a l period of change from non-production to production f a l l -ing somewhere between the s i x t h and eleventh grade. 23. Since t h i s o r i g i n a l research attempts to r e p l i c a t e t h i s developmental trend have been mixed and have varied with changes i n the c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s of the material to be learned. For example, Klemt and Anderson (1973) report lack of spontaneous elaboration among adults i n response to low frequency nouns, the explanation being that nouns low i n frequency are l e s s r i c h i n a s s o c i a t i v e p o s s i b i l i t i e s . S i m i l a r l y , a s s o c i a t i v e meaningful-ness and l e v e l of abstractness have been found to influence age of onset of spontaneous elaboration (Greer. &USuzuki, 1976). While evidence of spontan-eous elaboration with highly meaningful concrete nouns was found at the eighth grade l e v e l i n t h i s study, such performance was only beginning to emerge with abstract nouns of lower l e v e l s of meaningfulness at the tenth grade l e v e l . In summary, productive memory development i n response to the paired associate task can be seen as advancing along two f r o n t s . One of these i s the a c q u i s i t i o n of elaborative processes which can be applied with increas-i n g l y greater p r o f i c i e n c y and g e n e r a l i t y . The second, emerging somewhat l a t e r developmentally i s the growing propensity to approach the task of memorizing i n a p l a n f u l , problem-solving-like manner, and to spontaneously c a l l into play one's storehouse of elaborative processes. The essence of t h i s development of productive memory has been appropriately summarized by Hagen (1971): What he i s r e a l l y learning i s that he himself determines how well he does, and that he can improve h i s performance i f he uses ' c e r t a i n of h i s new s k i l l s i n c e r t a i n task s i t u a t i o n s . Thus, the i n t e n t i o n to remember comes about because the c h i l d has learned that remembering i s both possible and desirable. He also has 24. learned that h i s ever increasing (cognitive) s k i l l s can be put to use i n a memory s i t u a t i o n . The employment of these s k i l l s i n task-appropriate s t r a t e g i e s during the a c q u i s i t i o n phase of a memory task r e s u l t s i n enhanced memory performance, and he i s further encouraged to use the strategies as well as to develop even more e f f i c i e n t ones. (p. 268) Memory Development as Cognitive Development: In Rohwer's (1973) o r i g i n a l statement of the elaboration hypothesis the major emphasis was on the c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s of the prompts which were necessary to serve as ca t a l y s t s f o r the elaboration process. This research led to the general conclusion that e x p l i c i t n e s s of the required prompt decreased with age to the point where no s p e c i f i c prompt other than to remember was required during l a t e r adolescence, as demonstrated by the Rohwer and Bean (1973) research. From t h i s body of research, Rohwer (1977) has more recently gone on to make the statement that \"... i n t e l l e c t u a l development consists of in c r e a s i n g l y independent elaborative a c t i v i t y \" . Further attempts to r e p l i c a t e the adolescent developmental trend have served to emphasize the fact that elaborative propensity shows considerable v a r i a b i l i t y within any one age l e v e l and i s far from a unive r s a l s k i l l . The source of t h i s variance remains an open issue. In his e a r l i e r discus-sion of elaboration, Rohwer (1973) implied that cognitive developmental changes of a Piagetian form may underlie the changes i n elaborative propen-s i t y : \"...developmental changes i n conceptual processes during the period of adolescence permit the operation of elaboration i n the absence of con-crete external prompts.\" (p. 8) and references Inhelder and Piaget (1958) i n t h i s regard. A b r i e f consideration of the Piagetian p o s i t i o n concerning 25. the r e l a t i o n s h i p between the development of memory and that of general i n t e l l e c t u a l functioning i s c a l l e d f o r i f the implications of Rohwer's suggestion are to become apparent. Piaget and Memory: The Piagetian p o s i t i o n ( 1 9 6 9 ) repeatedly stresses that memory of an event i s more than a passive and receptive record of what i s perceived, a p o s i t i o n also held by the elaboration model; \"...the present formulation disavows any notion that the contents of memory are words, p i c t u r e s , or any other kind of copy of sensory or motor r e a l i t y \" (Rohwer, 1 9 7 3 , p. 4 ) . Rather memory, according to the Piagetian p o s i t i o n , i s c l o s e l y bound up with the l e v e l of understanding which i s brought to the task and as such i s best seen as one s p e c i a l case of i n t e l l e c t u a l a c t i v i t y applied to the reconstruction of the past. A d i s t i n c t i o n i s made by Piaget between what i s commonly c a l l e d memory on the one hand, and the conservation of the schemes of the i n t e l l i g e n c e on the other. \"Memory i n the wider ..-sense\" i s that which involves the conservation of the general schemes i n the form of repeatable processes and operations, while \"memory i n the s t r i c t sense\" involves the recognition, reconstruction and r e c a l l of singular s i t u a t i o n s , events, or objects which have been personally experienced and are l o c a l i z e d i n the past. The emphasis on personal experience i s also r e f l e c t e d i n the elaboration model: \"In an elaborative conception, learning i s seen as the mental construction of events, or event sequences (episodes), that serve to r e l a t e the otherwise i s o l a t e d e n t i t i e s and actions that com-p r i s e them. Such events i n v a r i a b l y have personal reference, whether i t i s i m p l i c i t or e x p l i c i t \" ... \"personal reference i s omnipresent i n learning.\" (Rohwer, 1 9 7 7 , p. 8 ) . This \"memory i n the s t r i c t sense\", i n the Piagetian view i s a store 26. of information i n f i g u r a t i v e form that has been encoded through perceptive and conceptual a s s i m i l a t i o n as a r e s u l t of the transformations of input brought about by the operational structures (memory i n the wider sense) which are a v a i l a b l e to the c h i l d . Thus any s p e c i f i c information which i s not 'an object of knowing' or understandable to the c h i l d (as determined by the operational sructures a v a i l a b l e ) cannot be r e c a l l e d because i t can-not be assimilated to any scheme presently i n the r e p e r t o i r e . The code which r e t a i n s these 'memories i n the s t r i c t sense' i s i n i t i a l l y conceived of as not highly structured and as i n v o l v i n g few r u l e s or schemes i n the preoperational c h i l d , being mainly directed toward accommodation and the f i g u r a l extension of the schemata. With age the l e v e l of memory organiza-t i o n w i l l change to r e f l e c t the operational development of the c h i l d . A s p e c i f i c event i s retained by v i r t u e of i t being i n i t i a l l y assimilated to one or more operational schemes, and i s represented i n the form of any accommodatory adjustments i n these schemes which may r e s u l t . R e c all w i l l be brought about by a^reconstructive process of r e i n t e g r a t i o n of these schemes which carry the r e s u l t s of t h i s accommodatory a c t i v i t y . Thus, with age the code w i l l acquire greater schematization as the c h i l d can employ and coordinate more elaborate operations. The goal of t h i s greater schem-a t i z a t i o n i s to eliminate redundancies as much as possible and allow for the retention of the maximum number of data with the minimum amount of information. The r e l a t i o n s h i p between the operational schemes and changes i n the nature of the code which holds information a v a i l a b l e f o r l a t e r reconstruc-t i o n has been the p r i n c i p l e thrust of the Piagetian research. The work of the Genevan group i t s e l f (Piaget & Inhelder, 1973) along with that of 27. several others (Altemeyer, Fulton & Berney, 1969; Furth, Ross, & Youniss, 1974; Liben, 1974; 1976) have been concerned p r i n c i p a l l y with demonstrating spontaneous changes i n memory code over periods ranging from one week to one year, accounting f o r t h i s change i n the f i g u r a t i v e aspect by operative growth which led to a r e v i s i o n of the \" o l d \" code. A small number of empir-i c a l i n v e s t i g a t i o n s of the r e l a t i o n s h i p between development as defined by Piaget and memory performance i n t r a d i t i o n a l laboratory tasks are a v a i l a b l e . For example, Tomlinson-Keasey, Crawford, and Miser (1975) report f i n d i n g a s i g n i f i c a n t r e l a t i o n s h i p between c l u s t e r i n g during free r e c a l l and Piagetian class i n c l u s i o n and h i e r a r c h i c a l c l a s s i f i c a t i o n s k i l l s i n kindergarten and f i r s t grade c h i l d r e n . The inference drawn was that c l a s s i f i c a t i o n s k i l l s are p r e r e q u i s i t e to the spontaneous use of c l u s t e r i n g as a memory organizing device i n t h i s task, a f i n d i n g that has recently been r e p l i c a t e d (Tomlinson-Keasey & Crawford, 1976). Haynes and Kulhavy (1976) have also examined r e -'call performance of c h i l d r e n at developmental l e v e l s defined by t h e i r a b i l -i t y to conserve mass, weight, and volume. The authors concluded from the re s u l t s that more mature subjects have a greater tendency to sel e c t and use superordinate information as an encoding device than do chi l d r e n of le s s cognitive maturity. However, no e x p l i c i t speculation was made on the re l a t i o n s h i p between t h i s performance and operations involved i n the three forms of conservation. A study perviously r e f e r r e d to (Prawat & C o n c e l l i , 1976) examined use of constructive memory ( i . e . , tendency to recognize correct l o g i c a l inferences which are i m p l i c i t i n the meaning but not e x p l i c i t l y stated i n a serie s of three statements) by conserving and non-conserving f i r s t grade chi l d r e n . From the r e s u l t s the authors o f f e r the tentative conclusion that concrete mental operations may play a general 28. f a c i l i t a t i v e r o l e i n the constuctive memory process, a r o l e however that may not be t i e d to the a v a i l a b i l i t y of s p e c i f i c schemes. In the f i n a l study of t h i s group, A r l i n (in press) reports r e c a l l data of adolescents following a problem f i n d i n g task which suggest a r e l a t i o n s h i p between the h i e r a r c h i c a l organization of self-generated information i n memory and formal operational structures. With the possible exception of the Tomlinson-Keasey (1975;1976) studies, t h i s small c o l l e c t i o n of papers i l l u s t r a t e s w ell the d i f f i c u l t i e s inherent i n attempting to apply anything more than the most general aspects of Piagetian developmental theory to the p a r t i c u l a r s of North American memory research. A common and j u s t i f i e d hesitancy was apparent i n the willingness of these researchers to specify Piagetian cognitive structures or operations beyond the most general index of developmental l e v e l which underlie changes i n performance on the memory tasks they examined. The problem i s further compounded by the lack of a common terminology both within and between memory and developmental research. The issue of \"structure to function\" s p e c i f i c i t y i n going from Piagetian theory to paired associate performance i s no l e s s a problem i n the present research. From the studies of elabor-a t i o n i n paired associate learning reviewed e a r l i e r i t would appear that those s p e c i f i c cognitive operations which are necessary for the elaboration of noun p a i r s are fu n c t i o n a l during the early school years (although with some decalage when abstractness and as s o c i a t i v e meaningfulness are v a r i e d ) , as evidenced by the ease with which young chi l d r e n can be prompted to carry out these operations. What i s to be accounted f o r by cognitive developmental theory i s the growing propensity to spontaneously engage i n t h i s type of elaborative a c t i v i t y during adolescence i n the absence of external support 29. for doing so. Memory and Formal Operational Thinking: The Piagetian writings (Piaget & Inhelder, 1973) concerning the devel-opment of memory have not s p e c i f i c a l l y attempted to r e l a t e t h e i r conceptions of memory to the changes occuring during the adolescent period with the emergence of formal operational structures. In a recent review of research pertaining to adolescent i n t e l l e c t u a l development, however, Neimark (1975) made a strong suggestion that such a r e l a t i o n s h i p existed: ...the essence of formal thinking l i e s i n organization and compression of information (as represented i n terms of more abstract f i g u r a t i v e aspects) for more e f f i c i e n t storage, r e t r i e v a l , and u t i l i z a t i o n . This type of information organ-i z a t i o n i s r e f l e c t e d not only i n performance on the t r a d i t i o n a l formal operational tasks but also i n , f o r example, deli b e r a t e creation of mnemonics, and spontaneous imposition of order on di s c r e t e instances and events...\" (P. 576) To pursue t h i s r e l a t i o n s h i p more f u l l y , i t i s necessary to examine the changes associated with the t r a n s i t i o n from concrete to formal operational thinking. According to Piagetian theory (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958; Piaget, 1972), the f i r s t of these major changes involves the a b i l i t y to use v e r b a l -l y , stated propositions as the elements of thinking rather than having to r e l y on the manipulation of the properties and r e l a t i o n s of concrete r e f e r -ents. Verbal statements can i n fact be substituted f o r objects and can themselves be manipulated as symbolic representations i n determining the t r u t h value of \" i f - t h e n \" propositions. This t r a n s i t i o n allows for higher l e v e l s of abstraction and generality to emerge i n thinking than was possible 30. during the concrete period. The second major change i s i n the hypothetical-deductive nature of formal thinking. Through the use of the complete combinatorial scheme, the formal thinker i s not only capable of subordinating r e a l i t y to p o s s i b i l i t y by t h i s a b i l i t y to generate a l l possible combinations of v a r i a b l e s , or a l l possible hypotheses, regardless of whether these states a c t u a l l y e x i s t . But he i s also capable of deducing the l o g i c a l consequences or truth value of each of these p o s s i b i l i t i e s through the use of the 16 possible combin-ations forming a binary combinatorial system, also c a l l e d the 16 Binary Operations of p r o p o s i t i o n a l l o g i c . Such competence i n deductive reasoning provides the a b i l i t y to reason by hypotheses, to apply a general p r i n c i p l e or hypothesis to p a r t i c u l a r cases i n order to v e r i f y the hypothesis. The t h i r d advancement of formal thinking over the concrete period i s access to the structured set of operations c a l l e d the I.N.R.C. group. This group of operations t y p i f i e s the capacity at the formal l e v e l to carry out \"second order operations\", or operations on operations. It i s the INRC group of operations which also allows the i n d i v i d u a l to perform operations on propositions themselves without regard to the r e a l i t y of the content, a point made e a r l i e r but worth r e i t e r a t i n g i n regard to i t s r e l a t i o n to t h i s operational capacity. In addition, the INRC group allows for the simultane-ous coordination of the two forms of r e v e r s i b i l i t y into a s i n g l e structured whole. With t h i s coordination of negation and r e c i p r o c i t y , the e f f e c t s of va r i a b l e s within a problem s i t u a t i o n can now be examined not only be exclu-sion, not always possible i n phys i c a l systems, but also can be neutralized by being held constant. This allows f o r examination not only of the ef f e c t of the v a r i a b l e under question, but also of the influence of other v a r i a b l e s within a s i n g l e composite system. Thus, the INRC group i n combination with the 16 binary operations of propostional l o g i c made av a i l a b l e by the combin-a t o r i a l scheme, provide the t o t a l operational structures necessary for hypothesis generation and t e s t i n g . In attempting to explore the r e l a t i o n s h i p between adolescent cognitive development and paired associate performance, i t i s proposed that spontane-ous unprompted elaboration i n t h i s task may be r e l i a n t upon the operations of the formal period i n several ways. F i r s t , i n i t i a l evocation of an active approach to the memory task required that the i n d i v i d u a l apply the general p r i n c i p l e or hypothesis that \" i f l a t e r r e c a l l i s to be insured, means-end actions must be undertaken now\", regardless whether the i n d i v i d u a l has ever experienced a paired-associate task o r any other formalized type of memory task before. This s i t u a t i o n appears to have some analogue i n the construction of formal operational schemes. For example, the l i n k s between the operations involved i n dealing with a concept such as proportion are established, by the i n d i v i d u a l as a r e s u l t of h i s need to i n t e r p r e t the concept i n the course of h i s experience. \"When the need i s f e l t , he manages to work them out spontaneously.\" (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958, p. 308), provid-ed he i s capable of using p r o p o s i t i o n a l l o g i c . As a further extension of t h i s , the spontaneous elaborator must be able to make decisions regarding the consequences of possible operations using propostional information. For example, the following s i t u a t i o n might have to be considered by the i n d i v i d u a l : Strategy 'x' i s used on an i n t i t i a l study t r i a l with some pai r s but not with others. During the f i r s t test t r i a l the i n d i v i d u a l notes that there are no p a i r s for which 'x' was applied and the p a i r was not r e c a l l e d ( i . e . , p.q where p = a pair f o r which 32. strategy 'x' was used, and q = a p a i r that was r e c a l l e d ) . There are cases of a l l other three outcomes, however ( i . e . , p.q, p.q, and p.q). The spon^ taneous elaborator must be able to use t h i s information to determine i f 'x' should be rejected or retained for use on subsequent t r i a l s . A b i l i t y to perform l o g i c a l inferences of t h i s type are dependent upon the p r o p o s i t i o n a l operations of the formal period. The spontaneous elaborator must also be able to generate multiple combinations and further combinations of these combinations of components of meaning and of elaborative operations presently i n the r e p e r t o i r e i n a systematic, task-oriented fashion, and simultaneously deduce the l o g i c a l consequences of these multiple p o t e n t i a l combinations f o r l a t e r r e c a l l . He must be able to take the operations for transforming input presently i n the r e p e r t o i r e of schemes and combine, modify, and otherwise operate upon these to produce new operations s u i t a b l e for the s p e c i f i c r e c a l l task at hand. The a b i l i t y to coordinate these multiple operations within a u n i f i e d system from which l o g i c a l deductions can be made concerning consequences appears to be of the sort that Piaget has referred to as 'Second Order Operations' or 'Interpropositional Operations', a competency which emerges with the coordinated functioning of the combinatorial system and the INRC group of operations. (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958) F i n a l l y , and p a r t i c u l a r l y with reference to the elaboration of abstract nouns, the spontaneous elaborator must be capable of generating hypothetical s i t u a t i o n s or r e f e r e n t i a l events which may never have been experienced or which may have no empirical r e a l i t y , and must a d d i t i o n a l l y be able to do so when these a t t r i b u t e s represent abstractions or components of meaning which have no s p e c i f i c external referents. It i s the combinatorial system 33. and the pr o p o s i t i o n a l l o g i c of the formal period that frees thinking from the confines of empirical r e a l i t y , using t h i s r e a l i t y simply as a springboard for speculation about \" a l l p o s sibles\" (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958). If the above analyses are l o g i c a l l y v a l i d , then much of the age r e l a t -ed variance i n spontaneous elaboration during the l a t e r childhood and adolescent period should cease to ex i s t i f variance associated with formal operational a b i l i t i e s can be p a r t i t i o n e d out. The present research sought to subject t h i s issue to empirical analysis. Assessment of Formal Thinking: In undertaking an examination of t h i s r e l a t i o n s h i p between spontaneous elaboration and formal thinking one i s faced with what might be characterized as the most often c r i t i c i z e d and unsettled aspect of Piagetian theory - the empirical status of formal opera-t i o n a l thinking. F i r s t , the issue of the u n i v e r s a l i t y of formal thinking has been s e r i o u s l y questioned. In the o r i g i n a l statement of the theory (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958) formal thinking was said to develop during the ages of 11 and 15 with e q u i l i b r a t i o n achieved i n 75 per cent of adoles-cents by 15 years of age. A considerable body of research has f a i l e d to support t h i s contention however, with percentages r a r e l y exceeding 55 to 60 per cent even among college students (Dale, 1970; D u l i t , 1972 ; Jack-son, 1965; L o v e l l , 1961; Ross, 1973; Tisher, 1971; Tomlinson-Keasey, 1972). For example, conservation of volume, generally characterized as a very early emerging formal operational competency shows considerable lack of u n i v e r s a l i t y with 60 per cent of college students (Elkind, 1962; Towler & Wheatley, 1971), 47 per cent of high school students (Elkind, 1962), and 25 per cent of grade s i x students (Elkind, 1961; U z g i r i s , 1964) demonstra-ting success with t h i s concept. 34. A restatement of the Piagetian p o s i t i o n concerning t h i s issue has r e -cently been made (Piaget, 1972):\" ... a l l normal subjects a t t a i n the stage of formal operations or st r u c t u r i n g i f not between 11-12 to 14-15, i n any case between 15 and 20 years. However, they reach t h i s stage i n d i f f e r e n t areas according to t h e i r aptitudes and t h e i r p r o f e s s i o n a l s p e c i a l i z a t i o n s (advanced studies or d i f f e r e n t types of apprenticeship for the various trades): the way i n which these formal structures are used, however, i s not n e c e s s a r i l y the same i n a l l cases.\" (p. 10). This restatement does l i t t l e , however, to i n s t i l l renewed confidence i n the researcher attempting to assess formal thinking with some measure of standardization. As Ross (1974) has made c l e a r , i f the formal structures are manifested d i f f e r e n t l y within a p a r t i c u l a r aptitude context, then i t would f i r s t be necessary to i d e n t i f y each i n d i v i d u a l ' s superior aptitude and then assess performance i n tasks which are congruent with i t . The s i t u a t i o n i s made into even more of a measurement problem by the second empirical issue of controversy, inconsistency of performance across tasks. This lack of consistency of performance across the various Inhelder and Piaget tasks has been repeatedly demonstrated (Dockerty, 1975; Jackson, 1965; L o v e l l , 1961; L o v e l l & Shields, 1967; Neimark, 1970; Ross, 1973; Tomlinson-Keasey, 1975) and poses a severe challenge to the construct v a l i d i t y of formal operations as presently conceived. L o v e l l ' s (1971) over-a l l conclusion a f t e r ten years of research into t h i s issue of consistency was that one should not an t i c i p a t e an index of concordance among the various Inhelder and Piaget tasks to be i n excess of .50. A rela t e d issue i s the degree to which formal thinking i s generalizable across various content areas and task v a r i a b l e s . For example, Berzonsky, Weiner, and Raphael (1975) report lack of a s i g n i f i c a n t r e l a t i o n s h i p between two tasks 35. requiring l o g i c a l thinking s k i l l s (concept attainment and verbal s y l l o g - ; isms), while Neimark (1970) found inconsistent patterns of r e l a t i o n s h i p s between several of the Inhelder and Piaget tasks and l o g i c a l problem solving. L o v e l l (1975) i n a recent review of research concerning t h i s issue notes that such factors as f a m i l i a r i t y with the materials, i n t e r e s t , and a t t i t u d e toward subject matter a l l influence the degree to which formal thinking i s manifest i n performance. S i m i l a r l y , Ross (1974) has reported that the degree to which problems are ego-involving or require e t h i c a l de-cision-making influences the l i k e l i h o o d that formal thinking w i l l be opera-t i o n a l . Again, one can r e f e r to the recent restatement of the Genevan p o s i -t i o n (Piaget, 1972) which has been modified somewhat to allow for some i n t r a i n d i v i d u a l inconsistences across tasks. \" B r i e f l y , we r e t a i n the idea that formal operations are free from t h e i r concrete content, but we must add that t h i s i s true only on the condition that for the subjects the s i t u a -tions involve equal aptitudes or comparable v i t a l i n t e r e s t s . \" (p. 11). From an assessment standpoint then, i f the research i s to maximize the pro-b a b i l i t y that formal competencies are manifest i n performance, tasks must be concomitant with each i n d i v i d u a l s p a r t i c u l a r aptitudes and must be of equivalent motivational value. In addition to the above concerns regarding assessment of formal thinking, research has been ambiguous with regard to sex differences i n performance on measures of formal thinking. While several investigations f i n d males superior to females on a number of such tasks (Dale, 1970; D u l i t , 1972; Elkind, 1962; Ross, 1973) no such sex differences have been found by others (O'Brien & Shapiro, 1968; U z g i r i s , 1964). The general trend i n t h i s research would seem to be an increasing tendency toward male s u p e r i o r i t y of performance as age increases. 36. F i n a l l y , as well as these problems of lack of u n i v e r s a l i t y of ac-q u i s i t i o n of formal structures, inconsistency of performance across tasks and content areas, and the seeming uneveness of development across the sexes, methodological problems associated with the use of the Inhelder and Piaget tasks ( i . e . importance of precise and dependable apparatus, lack of clear standardization and scoring of protocols, time-consuming nature of procedure) must be contended with by the researcher. In response to these d i f f i c u l t i e s , attempts have been made by a number of researchers e i t h e r to develop more standardized administration and scoring of the o r i g i n a l Inhelder and Piaget tasks, i n some cases with group administration and paper and p e n c i l responding (e.g. Howe & Mierzwa, 1976; Nolen, 1976; Ross, 1975; Tisher, 1971; Tomlinson-Keasey, 1975) or to develop a l t e r n a t i v e tasks which assess presence of formal structures (e.g. Fishbien, Pampu, & Marzat, 1970; Karplus & Karplus, 1970; Karplus & Peterson, 1970; Neimark & Lewis, 1967; 1968; O'Brien & Shapiro, 1968; Peel, 1971; S i l l s & Herron, 1974). Unfortunately, only i s o l a t e d attempts to e s t a b l i s h r e l a t i o n s h i p s of a psy-chometric nature between these measures and the t r a d i t i o n a l formal tasks of Inhelder and Piaget (1958) have been undertaken. From the foregoing i t i s apparent that one cannot r e l y upon perform-ance on a sing l e task, whether i t be one of the o r i g i n a l Piagetian measures or some other means of assessment of formal structures, i f one i s to esta-b l i s h the existence of general formal competence not t o t a l l y biased by s i t u a t i o n - s p e c i f i c v a r i a b l e s . Neimark (1975) i n considering the problem of the s e l e c t i o n of appropriate measures of assessment of formal thinking cautions the researcher: In the case of research addressed to Piaget's theory of formal operations, t h i s means that, as a minimum, one sele c t s dependent 37. v a r i a b l e measures that are v a l i d indices of formal operations. This, i n turn, requires c a r e f u l consideration not only of the measures to\" be obtained but also of the appropriateness of the task and the representativeness of the groups employed (p. 573) In the present research i t was proposed e a r l i e r that the p a r t i c u l a r compe-tencies which the formal operational i n d i v i d u a l has that are relevant to spontaneous elaboration of paired associates are a b i l i t i e s to generate multiple s o l u t i o n hypotheses i n the form of mnemonic s t r a t e g i e s , to carry out empirical t e s t i n g of these, and to modify the mnemonic consonant' with the r e s u l t s of these e f f o r t s . In addition, these a b i l i t i e s must be applicable to v e r b a l l y stated problems devoid of concrete referents which can be d i r e c t l y interacted with. The requirement then, was for an instument that met the following c r i t e r i a : the items assessed combinatorial operations and p r o p o s i t i o n a l thinking; the items had a demonstrated r e l a t i o n s h i p with Piagetian formal operational tasks; the format was appropriate for children i n the 12 to 18 year age range; the instrument could be managably administered and scored for i n excess of 250 i n d i v i d u a l s . Due to the l a s t requirement, s p e c i a l a t t e n t i o n was paid to e x i s t i n g group administered measures which allow for paper and p e n c i l responding. Following Neimark's (1975) suggestion, the proposed test battery included two formal operational conservation problems (volume and density) i n addition to one concrete conservation task (weight). The i n c l u s i o n of these items provided a general index of developmental l e v e l on tasks f o r which general agreement e x i s t s concerning structures f o r solu-t i o n . , In addition, volume conservation i s considered to mark the early emergence of coordinated functioning of the INRC group (Brainerd, 1970;1971; 38. Neimark, 1975). Nolen (1976) has recently developed and reported use of a paper and p e n c i l version of occupied volume conservation and her form i s e a s i l y adaptable to group administration, i n coordination with the proce-dure for i n d i v i d u a l administration s p e c i f i e d by Brainerd (1971). For purposes of assessing combinatorial thinking, the chemicals task of Inhelder and Piaget (1958) was the obvious choice. Tomlinson-Keasey (1975) has developed a s t r i c t l y paper and p e n c i l version of t h i s task which she has used with college students and has found r e s u l t s to generally p a r a l l e l those of other i n d i v i d u a l l y administered formal tasks. This prob-lem set allows one to examine the subject's s t r a t e g i e s i n generating com-binations, t h e i r a b i l i t y to draw conclusions, and t h e i r a b i l i t y to generate c r i t i c a l t e s t s . While the questionaire and scoring format used by Tomlin-son-Keasey w i l l be employed i n the present assessment instrument, there was some concern f o r the degree of c l a r i t y of the problem i n i t s present form for the younger ch i l d r e n examined i n t h i s research. To remove any p o s s i b i l i t i e s of misunderstanding i t was f e l t wise to supplement the questionaire form with demonstrations of the equipment at various points i n the t e s t i n g session, a group administration procedure which has been found to produce 75 per cent agreement i n group versus i n d i v i d u a l assess-ment of formal thinking (Ross, 197:4; Tisher, 1971). For the assessment of p r o p o s i t i o n a l thinking, two versions of the l o g i c a l implications problems i n i t i a l l y developed by Peel (1971) were selected for use. This decision was j u s t i f i e d i n part by the fact that these items have been characterized as \"...an a l t e r n a t i v e to the hidden magnetism task which Inhelder and Piaget used to study the 16 binary opera-ti o n s of l o g i c a l thought\" ( A r l i n , i n press), and have been c o n s i s t e n t l y 39. found to be d i r e c t l y r e l a t e d to t r a d i t i o n a l measures of formal thinking (Arlin,:.in press; Nolen, 1975). These problems present the c h i l d with data (the existence of cases of the form p.q, p.q, and p.q, phrased i n r e a l - l i f e contexts) which appear to be s u f f i c i e n t for e s t a b l i s h i n g a cond i t i o n a l r e -l a t i o n s h i p between two p r o p o s i t i o n a l functions, p and q. The c h i l d i s then expected to recognize that no d e f i n i t e p r o p o s i t i o n a l conclusion can be drawn without knowledge of the existence or non-existence of cases of the form p.q. Nolen (1976). has developed and tested both a constructed answer and a multiple choice format of these two problems and has found the l a t t e r to be l e s s stringent i n t e s t i n g l o g i c a l reasoning. In addition, one of the prob-lems which concerned the influence of compensatory language programs on language achievement of \"Headstart\" ch i l d r e n was judged to be of content with which many of the Canadian ch i l d r e n tested i n t h i s research would be unfamiliar. For t h i s reason, the problem was substituted by one of i d e n t i -c a l form but whose content referred to a summer hockey school and subsequent goal-scoring behavior, i n an attempt to place i t i n a more Canadian context. This change seems doubly j u s t i f i e d i n l i g h t of Piaget's caution that prob-lems must be of high f a m i l i a r i t y and i n t e r e s t to subjects i f formal thinking i s to be demonstrated. The exact form of these problems can be found i n Appendix B. CHAPTER I I I Methodological Considerations Method Subjects: In t h e i r o r i g i n a l i n v e s t i g a t i o n of spontaneous elaboration Rohwer and Bean (1973) found clear evidence of a developmental trend only among students sampled from a high SES population. As one of the intents of t h i s research was to attempt to r e p l i c a t e these f i n d i n g s , p a r t i c u l a r care was taken to sample from a l i k e population. Students involved i n t h i s r e -search were enrolled i n one elementary and one secondary school within the West Vancouver School System. A l l students were from a r e s i d e n t i a l d i s t r i c t i d e n t i f i e d as having the highest income l e v e l of any census t r a c t i n the province ( S t a t i s t i c s Canada, 1970). A t o t a l of 279 students i n grades 6, 8, 10, and 12 were administered the formal operations instrument (FOI). This number included 47 grade 6 students, 85 grade 8 students, 73 grade 10 stu-dents, and 74 grade 12 students, with approximately equal numbers of s t u -dents of each sex at each grade. The grade 6 students were members of two i n t a c t classes, while the students i n the other three grades were members of three s o c i a l studies classes within each grade l e v e l . A l l students were en-r o l l e d i n academic college preparation programs. One male i n each of the older two grades was subsequently dropped from p a r t i c i p a t i o n when i t became apparent that they were new Canadians from non-English speaking homes. From t h i s i n i t i a l pool of subjects 18 students of each sex within each grade l e v e l were selected to serve i n the paired associate learning phase of the research. Selection procedures are described below. Design: A 4 x 3 f a c t o r i a l design was used with treatment groups (control, r e p e t i t i o n , trained) nested within grades (6, 8, 10, 12). T r i a l s (3), noun p a i r concreteness (concrete (C), abstract (A)), and l e v e l of 40. 41. a s s o c i a t i v e meaningfulness within concreteness (CL, CH, AL, AH) were treated as within subjects v a r i a b l e s . The use of three study-test t r i a l s was con-sidered desirable, given the s i g n i f i c a n t t r i a l s e f f e c t of previous research (Greer & Suzuki, 1976). Within each of the four grade l e v e l s s i x t r i a d s of same-sexed students were formed by matching on the basis of FOI t o t a l score and age i n months. One member of each t r i a d was then randomly assign-ed to each of the three treatment groups. In the assignment of these t r i a d s , attempts were made to have the mean age and FOI score of each treatment group as equivalent as possib l e , as well as being as representative of the o v e r a l l grade mean on these two indices as the sample would allow. The f i n a l make-up of each group by grade and sex i s summarized i n Table I. The c o n t r o l group was i d e n t i c a l to Rohwer and Bean's (1973) minimal prompt group i n that subjects were simply instructed to pay attention and to do t h e i r best to remember the p a i r s . The r e p e t i t i o n group was instructed to learn the p a i r s by rehearsal and was required to repeat each p a i r o v e r t l y during the ten-second interitem i n t e r v a l of the study t r i a l s . In the t r a i n -ed group i n s t r u c t i o n s and p r a c t i c e i n the use of both i n t e r a c t i v e imagery and verbal elaboration was provided p r i o r to the f i r s t t r i a l of the memory task. Materials Paired Associate L i s t : The 32 nouns (16 concrete, 16 abstract) making up the 16-item paired associate l i s t were selected from among a pool of 96 nouns for which m data for grades 6, 8, and 10 had been previously c o l l e c t e d using Nobel's (1952) procedure (Greer & Suzuki, 1976). These 32 nouns were selected so that eight of the nouns within each l e v e l of concreteness were s i g n i f i c a n t l y lower i n mean m at each grade l e v e l than were the remaining eight. Thus, the eight concrete low m (CL) pa i r s were s i g n i f i c a n t l y lower Table I Experimental Design Grade 6 Grade 8 Grade 10 Grade 12 Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female PHASE I n 26 21 44 41 39 34 35 39 M Age 140 140 164 162 187 187 214 209 S.D. 4.20 3.58 4.49 3.87 5.76 7.56 6.12 4.36 M FOI 31.50 35.19 36.32 42.29 43.53 40.76 46.65 46.64 S.D. 11.10 8.72 9.26 6.63 6.87 10.82 7.98 7.50 PHASE I I Control: n 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 M Age 143 141 164 164 188 184 211 208 S.D. 4.18 2.73 2.66 2.45 1.87 7.88 2.53 4.92 M FOI 34.50 35.83 41.33 44.00 47.17 42.33 48.17 44.50 S.D. 9.61 10.01 6.28 5.51 7.55 9.97 4.49 5.50 Repetition: n 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 M Age 141 139 163 163 188 188 214 208 S.D. 4.05 4.26 2.97 2.14 8.31 4.14 7.60 3.58 M FOI 34.17 35.00 44.17 42.83 46.33 45.17 47.33 47.00 S.D. 9.37 6.99 9.62 7.19 4.46 10.63 3.08 6.26 Trained: n 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 M Age 140 140 164 163 183 189 214 210 S.D. 3.78 4.54 4.83 2.43 4.96 3.92 3.92 3.22 M FOI 35.33 35.17 42.00 42.83 45.83 44.50 47.17 47.50 S.D. 7.94 9.06 6.16 6.40 5.04 8.83 5.91 5.28 Note. M FOI = Mean t o t a l score on.Formal Operations Instrument, Total possible score = 53 43. i n mean m than the eight concrete high m (CH) p a i r s at each grade l e v e l . Likewise, the eight abstract low m p a i r s (AL) were lower i n mean m than the eight abstract high m (AH) p a i r s . It was not pos s i b l e to select items that allowed f o r examination of the influence of abstractness independent of l e v e l of meaningfulness i n the l i s t as a whole because of the strong negative r e l a t i o n s h i p between abstract-ness l e v e l and m at a l l three grades. In s e l e c t i n g items, however, i t was possible to achieve equivalence i n m l e v e l s among the eight CL and the eight AH nouns. Thus, within the t o t a l noun p a i r l i s t t h i s subset of pair s allowed for examination of the influence of abstractness l e v e l on memory performance independent of meaningfulness.level. The f i n a l l i s t of 16 p a i r s was constructed by random p a i r i n g of the nouns within each concreteness and m l e v e l combination. The r e s u l t i n g l i s t i s presented i n Table I I . A de t a i l e d account of the item s e l e c t i o n pro-cedures and s t a t i s t i c a l analysis of the l i s t c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s i s reported i n Appendix A. A l l pai r s f o r study t r i a l s and stimulus nouns f or test t r i a l s were prepared on color s l i d e s , with a l l l e t t e r s typed i n upper case. Training M a t e r i a l s : For t r a i n i n g purposes four concrete and four abstract noun pai r s were constructed from among the unused nouns of the o r i g i n a l 96. These p a i r s included: desk-boat, scissors-candle, telephone-s t r i n g , railroad-strawberry, cost-duty, interest-anger, belief-chance, l i f e -glory. Each p a i r and each stimulus noun alone f o r the p r a c t i c e study and r e c a l l t r i a l s , r e s p e c t i v e l y , were printed on white index cards. In addition, for the concrete p a i r 'desk-boat' a simple l i n e drawing of a desk with a small boat on i t was prepared on one card, and the sentence \"The desk has a boat on i t . \" was printed on a second card. For the abstact pair 'cost-duty', an i n t e r a c t i v e image of a broom with a p r i c e tag marked 10c was 4 4 . Table II Structure of Paired Associate L i s t Mean m and S.D. by Grade Pair Type Item Pair 1 0 Concrete Low m (CL) pipe b a r r e l star fork i r o n f l a g hammer d o l l Concrete High m (CH) f i r e apple flower house tree baby ship b i r d Abstract Low m (AL) method shame pride fate a b i l i t y t r uth f a u l t opinion Abstract High m 55) was calculated. These data are presented i n Figure 1. It w i l l be noted that the d i s t r i b u t i o n s of the two younger groups are somewhat bimodal i n nature, with the lower mode f o r grade 6 students f a l l i n g i n the 25 - 29 score range and that for grade 8 students i n the 30 -34 range. Considering that a score of approximately 32 would represent the borderline between a 50 percent \"passing\" and \" f a i l i n g \" c r i t e r i o n on t h i s 63 point t e s t , then both of these lower modes could be c l a s s i f i e d as f a l l -ing w ithin the \" f a i l i n g \" range. The second and higher score mode was i n the 35 - 39 range for grade 6 students and i n the 40 - 44 score range for the grade 8 students. For the older two groups of grade 10 and grade 12 students however, the d i s t r i b u t i o n s were c l e a r l y unimodal and negatively skewed, with the mode for grade 10 i n the 40 - 44 i n t e r v a l and that f o r grade 12 i n the 50 - 54 i n t e r v a l . In addition, i f the 30 - 34 i n t e r v a l i s taken as representing the boundary between a passing and f a i l i n g score out of the t o t a l of 63 possibl e , then the commulative precentages i n d i c a t e that 48 percent of the grade 6 sample received a \" f a i l i n g grade\", 33 percent of the grade 8 sample did so, but only 17 percent and 6 percent of grades 10 and 12 r e s p e c t i v e l y d i d so. To provide some index of the degree of consistency of i n d i v i d u a l per-formance across test items, along with the degree of r e l a t i o n s h i p of i n d i v -i d u a l items with t o t a l scores, c o r r e l a t i o n s were computed among these scores. These are presented i n Tahle V. Low but s i g n i f i c a n t c o r r e l a t i o n s between age and item scores were found. In a d d i t i o n , a l l i n t e r c o r r e l a t i o n s among test items were s i g n i f i c a n t except for those between weight (a concrete operational conservation task) and three of the formal operational items -hypothesis t e s t i n g i n the chemicals task and the two propositional.'logic 63. gure 1. D i s t r i b u t i o n of FOI Total Score by Grade 64. 3TdlnJVS JO l N 3 0 U 3 d Table V Product Moment Correlation C o e f f i c i e n t s Among FOI Item Scores, Age, and FOI T o t a l Scor 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 1. Age (months) : I7o .19** .20** .28** .21** .16* 2. Weight Conservation 1.0 .39** .30** .20** .10 3. Volume Conservation 1.0 .32** .20** 224*' 4. Density Conservation 1.0 .33** .18*' 5. Combinations Generated 1.0 .28*' 6. Hypothesis Testing 1.0 7. P r o p o s i t i o n a l Logic (Hockey) 8. Pr o p o s i t i o n a l Logic (Rose) 9. Tot a l Score 1.0 7. 8. . 9. .27** .25** . 37** .03 .07 .38** .19** .22** .58** .17** .22** . 55** .24** . 22** .63** .31** .19** .57** .0 . 54** .67** 1.0 .65** n = 277 * p < .05 ** p < .01 66. problems. Factor Analysis of FOI As a means of examining the various FOI item scores f o r the presence of any underlying structure, these seven scores were subjected to a maximum l i k e l i h o o d f a c t o r a n a l y s i s . The analysis was continued u n t i l the eigen values dropped below one. In t h i s case t h i s d e c i s i o n r e s u l t e d i n two f a c -tors which together accounted for approximately 53 percent of the t o t a l variance (eigen values 1 through 7 were 2.43, 1.28, .87, .80, .63, .56, and .43, r e s p e c t i v e l y ) . A varimax r o t a t i o n was then performed, and Table VI pre-sents the r e s u l t i n g f a c t o r loadings. Factors I and I I appear to correspond to some d i v i s i o n between p r o p o s i t i o n a l l o g i c (or lack of i t ) on the one hand, and conservation on the other, with competencies required by the two aspects of the chemicals task being equally and moderately.implicated i n the two f a c t o r s . More s p e c i f i c a l l y , Factor I would appear to involve something more than the concrete operational a b i l i t i e s involved i n conservation of weight. Rather, the pattern of factor loadings associated with Factor I suggests the a b i l i t y to think i n a hypothetico-deductive fashion, to generate and te s t hypotheses ( i . e . , loading of the hypothesis t e s t i n g component of the chemicals task), and to carry out such thinking on the basis of v e r b a l l y stated propositions alone ( i . e . , loadings associated with the Hockey and Rose problems). In short, i t seems appropriate to l a b e l Factor I as \"pro-p o s i t i o n a l l o g i c \" . On the other hand, Factor II seems most accurately described as the a b i l i t y to simultaneously coordinate transformations along two or more d i -mensions as required by the volume and density conservations, and hence to i n f e r p r o p o r t i o n a l i t y . In a d d i t i o n to t h i s i s some a b i l i t y i n combinatorial thinking, as implied by the modest fa c t o r loadings of both aspects of the 67. Table VI Factor Analysis of FOI Item Scores for 277 Students i n Grades 6, 8, 10, and 12 - A Varimax Rotation. FOI Item Factor I Factor II Weight Conservation .013 .602 Volume Conservation -.186 .577 Density Conservation -.181 .535 Combinations Generated -.265 .379 Hypothesis Testing -.333 .253 Pro p o s i t i o n a l Logic (Hockey) -.865 .052 Propositional Logic (Rose) -.613 .162 Percent of T o t a l Variance 34.64 18.29 68. chemicals task i n Factor I I . In Piagetian terms, the pattern of factor load-ings on Factor II could be interpreted as the coordinated a p p l i c a t i o n of the INRC group of cognitive operations to the s o l u t i o n of these problems. On completion of the factor analysis with varimax r o t a t i o n , two ortho-gonal factor scores were estimated f o r each of the 277 i n d i v i d u a l s , using the Anderson and Rubin (1956) formula. It should be noted that t h i s formula r e s u l t s i n factor scores which are orthogonal but not univocal. These estimated scores are standardized with a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10. It was these two factor scores, entered into the regression equation sequentially i n the order of Factor I and Factor II which served as covar-i a t e s i n the subsequent analysis of the memory performance data. Paired Associate Performance Data Analysis: The mean number of correct responses are presented i n Table VII as a function of grade (4), treatment mode (3), t r i a l s (3), and item type (4). The f i r s t two factors are between-subjects while the remain-ing two factors represent within-subject repeated measures. M u l t i v a r i a t e analysis of variance was performed on the data to examine trends across grade l e v e l s , the e f f e c t s of treatment within grade, and sex within t r e a t -ment within grade. As the questions of major i n t e r e s t i n t h i s research i n -volved grade and treatment e f f e c t s within the two abstractness l e v e l s , twelve new dependent v a r i a b l e s were created from the o r i g i n a l item type by t r i a l s v a r i a t e s . The f i r s t , the sum of the o r i g i n a l s i x concrete v a r i a t e s was created to examine the t o t a l between-subjects e f f e c t s f o r concrete p a i r s . Five a d d i t i o n a l concrete item type v a r i a t e s were orthogonal trans-formations of the o r i g i n a l s i x concrete v a r i a t e s and were created to repre-sent the within-subjects e f f e c t s of t r i a l s : (1) M t r i a l 1 - M ( t r i a l 2 + t r i a l 3); (2) M t r i a l 2 - M t r i a l 3; meaningfulness (high m - low m); and 69. Table VII Mean R e c a l l by Grade, Treatment, T r i a l s , and Item Type T r i a l 1 CL CH AL AH T r i a l 2 CL CH AL AH T r i a l 3 CL CH AL AH Grade. 6 Control 1.83 1.50 .83 1.25 Repetition 1.17 .83 .42 1.50 Trained 3.17 3.25 .83 2.75 Ov e r a l l 2.06 1.86 .69 1.83 Grade 8 Control 1.67 1.92 .75 1.92 Repetition 2.67 1.83 .92 1.67 Trained 2.50 2.75 1.08 2.83 Overa l l 2.28 2.17 .92 2.14 Grade 10 Control 2.42 2.75 1.00 2.08 Repetition 2.17 1.50 .75 1.67 Trained 3.33 2.75 1.33 3.00 Ov e r a l l 2.64 2.33 1.03 2.25 Grade 12 Control 3.08 2.75 1.50 3.00 Repetition 1.67 1.67 1.33 2.33 Trained 3.75 3.67 1.17 3.58 Ov e r a l l 2.83 2.69 1.33 2.97 3.33 2.67 1.25 2.42 3.58 3.33 2.67 3.42 2.42 2.17 1.33 2.75 3.17 2.58 2.33 3.33 3.92 3.92 1.92 3.67 4.00 3.83 2.58 4.00 3.22 2.92 1.50 2.94 3.58 3.25 2.53 3.58 3.42 2.92 2.08 3.33 3.67 3.33 3.08 3.75 3.67 3.25 1.75 3,17 3.92 3.67 2.92 3.92 3.67 3.33 2.08 3.67 3.67 3.75 2.92 3.83 3.61 3.17 1.97 3.39 3.75 3.58 2.97 3.83 3.67 3.58 2.25 3.50 3.83 3.83 2.83 3.92 3.42 2.67 1.75 2.83 3.75 3.50 2.92 3.83 4.00 3.67 2.50 3.67 4.00 3.92 3.08 4.00 3.69 3.31 2.17 3.33 3.86 3.75 2.94 3.92 3.75 3.67 2.75 3.67 4.00 3.92 3.42 3.83 3.08 2.75 2.25 3.33 3.92 3.58 3.08 3.83 4.00 4.00 2.25 3.92 4.00 4.00 3.50 4.00 3.61 3.47 2.42 3.64 3.97 3.83 3.33 3.89 70. the t r i a l s by m i n t e r a c t i o n s . The same s i x new v a r i a t e s were created to represent these e f f e c t s within abstract p a i r s as well. A f t e r the multivar-i a t e tests were performed considering a l l 12 v a r i a t e s simultaneously, u n i -v a r i a t e tests were performed on each of the 12 v a r i a t e s separately. Trend analyses were performed to examine the influence of grade on r e c a l l . The e f f e c t s associated with grade were p a r t i t i o n e d into three or-thogonal components: l i n e a r , quadratic, and cubic. The e f f e c t of treatment within grade was examined using two non-orthogonal contrasts, i n the following order of t e s t i n g : f.'j = M Repetition - M Trained $ 2 = M Control - M Trained As these contrasts are non-orthogonal and d i f f e r from those used by Rohwer ( i . e . Wj. = MC - MT; ¥ 2 = M.c ~ M?) > a word of explanation i s warranted to j u s t i f y t h e i r s e l e c t i o n f o r the present research. F i r s t , none of the three possible orthogonal sets of contrasts made t h e o r e t i c a l sense i n t e s t i n g the elaboration hypothesis at a l l grade l e v e l s as elaboration i s operationally defined as control group performance equivalent to the trained group which has i n turn been found to be superior i n performance to the r e p e t i t i o n group. Secondly, given that one must use a non-orthogonal p a i r of contrasts, the order i n which the contrasts are tested becomes of c r i t i c a l importance, since the sum of the separate sums of squares for each term i n the model exceeds the t o t a l sums of squares ( i . e . , there would be \"double-counting\" of share variance among non-orthogonal contrasts). In t h i s case, the con-t r a s t tested second w i l l be treated as i f i t were one h a l f of an orthogonal p a i r of contrasts, while the f i r s t tested contrast w i l l be given a more ' l i b e r a l ' test and w i l l be more subject to Type I errors of f a l s e r e j e c t i o n 71. of the n u l l hypothesis. The issue then becomes one of determining on which contrast one i s le a s t w i l l i n g to make a Type I error. A f t e r c a r e f u l consid-eration of the consequences of err o r s , i t was decided that while the r i s k of f a l s e l y i n f e r i n g the performance of the trained group to be d i f f e r e n t from that of the r e p e t i t i o n group would be bothersome, i t would be of l e s s t h e o r e t i c a l consequence than making a s i m i l a r error of judgement concerning the comparison of the control and trained groups. This decision seemed further j u s t i f i e d i n l i g h t of the numerous studies which have found the type of t r a i n i n g employed i n t h i s research to be f a c i l i t a t i v e , thus making the MR vs MT contrast l e s s open to the need f o r a c r i t i c a l t e s t . F i n a l l y , i t should be noted that once the decision was made to use the MC vs MT as the second contrast, the dif f e r e n c e between the other contrast which i s to be entered f i r s t becomes one of name alone. That i s , the same numerical value r e s u l t s whether i t i s c a l l e d MR vs MT as was done here, or whether one r e f e r s to t h i s other contrast as MC vs MR as Rohwer chooses to r e f e r to his contrast which he uses with the c r i t i c a l MC vs MT one. Following the analysis of variance described above, the analysis of covariance of r e c a l l scores was performed using as covariates each i n d i v -idual's two factor scores generated from the factor analysis of the FOI scores. In t h i s manner, the influence of l o g i c a l thinking a b i l i t i e s (as measured by the FOI) on memory performance could be assessed by comparing the r e s u l t s of the two analyses. Grade Both the te s t of l i n e a r i t y f o r within-concrete (F(l,120) = 18.75, p « . 0 1 ) and within-abstract e f f e c t s (F(l,120) = 23.20, p < .01) were highly s i g n i f i c a n t . For the eight concrete p a i r s mean r e c a l l for grades 6, 8, 10, and 12 was 5.63, 6.19, 6.53, and 6.81,-respectively. For the abstract p a i r s , 72. these means were 4.36, 5.07, 5.21, and 5.86, re s p e c t i v e l y . When these data were subjected to a covariate a n a l y s i s , using the two FOI f a c t o r scores to s t a t i s t i c a l l y c ontrol f o r the influence of formal thinking a b i l i t i e s , both the tes t of l i n e a r i t y of the within-concrete ^ (F(l,118) = 4.76, p < .05) and within-abstract e f f e c t s (F(l,118)•••=:?7u80, p < .01) remained s i g n i f i c a n t . In Figure 2 the di f f e r e n c e between observed and estimated r e c a l l by grade based on the covariate model with two covar-i a t e s can be seen. I t w i l l be noted that the dif f e r e n c e between observed and estimated r e c a l l i s greatest at the two extremes of the grade range with very l i t t l e d i f f e r e n c e at the grade 8 l e v e l . With the influence of l o g i c a l thinking a b i l i t i e s p a r t i a l l e d out, observed r e c a l l of concrete and abstract p a i r s i s lower than estimated r e c a l l at the grade 6 l e v e l . Conversly, for grade 1 0 and 12 students observed r e c a l l i s higher than that which would be estimated i f l o g i c a l thinking a b i l i t i e s are used as covariates. To examine the degree to which these r e s u l t s were consistent across t r i a l s and l e v e l s of meaningfulness, an a d d i t i o n a l analysis of the grade trends was performed on the o r i g i n a l 12 dependent v a r i a b l e s . The univariate F's associated with the l i n e a r component'were a l l highly s i g n i f i c a n t f o r the 12 measures, while none of the tests associated with either the quad-r a t i c of cubic components reached s t a t i s t i c a l s i g n i f i c a n c e . When the co-va r i a t e analyses were performed, only three u n i v a r i a t e F's associated with the l i n e a r component remained s i g n i f i c a n t , however. These were for CH pa i r s on t r i a l 3 (F(l,117) = 5.75, p < .05), and for AH pair s on t r i a l 1 (F(l,117) = ll.,87, p < .01) and t r i a l 3 (F(l,117) = 3.85, p < .05). Again, none of the tests associated with the remaining two trends were s t a t i s t i c a l l y s i g n i f i c a n t . In summary, a strong l i n e a r trend across grades was found for both 73. Figure 2. Differences Between Observed and Estimated Item R e c a l l Based on Covariate Model, by Grade and Item Concreteness 74. • • CONCRETE • • ABSTRACT F I G U R E 2 75. concrete and abstract p a i r s , with r e c a l l performance improving with grade. The r e s u l t s of the analysis on the o r i g i n a l 12 scores also indicated that t h i s l i n e a r trend was consistent across t r i a l s and l e v e l s of m; When the variance associated with l o g i c a l thinking a b i l i t i e s was p a r t i t i o n e d out, the tests of the l i n e a r component associated with the within-concrete and within-abstract e f f e c t s s t i l l reached s t a t i s t i c a l s i g n i f i c a n c e . From the r e s u l t s of the covariate analysis on the o r i g i n a l scores, t h i s pattern was found to be related to CH p a i r s on t r i a l 3, and to AH p a i r s on t r i a l s 1 and 3. Treatment Within Grade: = MR - MT; $ 2 = MC - MT) A summary of the tests for the treatment within grade comparisons are presented i n Table VIII. Spontaneous elaboration of either concrete of abstract p a i r s was i n f e r r e d within a grade l e v e l i f performance of the con-t r o l group did not d i f f e r from that of the trained group = C-T) with :. the p r o v i s i o n that performance of the trained group would be superior to that of the r e p e t i t i o n group ( f ^ = R-T). Grade 6: From Table VTII i t i s evident that at t h i s grade l e v e l the test of the f i r s t contrast, R-T was s i g n i f i c a n t for concrete p a i r s (MR = 4.11, MT = 7.36) but not for abstract ones (MR = 3.89, MT = 5.25). The t e s t s also indicated that t h i s s u p e r i o r i t y of trained over r e p e t i t i o n group performance for concrete p a i r s was consistent across l e v e l s of m but varied from t r i a l 2 to t r i a l 3. From Figure 3 i t i s apparent that t h i s d i f f e r e n c e was greater on t r i a l 2 than on t r i a l 3. No such i n t e r a c t i o n s were suggested by the univariate t e s t s of abstract noun p a i r s . The t e s t s of the second comparison, C-T were concrete p a i r s (MC = 5.41, MT = 7.36) as well as for abstract p a i r s (MC = 3.95, MT = 5.25). In addi-t i o n , the univariate tests for concrete p a i r s i n d i c a t e that while t h i s Table VIII F-Ratlos for Treatment Comparisons Within Grades Univariate F's (d.f. - 1,120) Concrete Noun Pairs Abstract Noun Pairs Within T1-T23 T2-T3 m m x T1-T23 m x T2-T3 Within T1-T23 T2-T3 m m x T1-T23 m x T2-T3 Grade 6 MR - MT 28.86** 2.55 4.15* < 1 <1 2.27 2.40 <1 <1 <1 '1 *1 MC - MT 15.77** 6.95** 5.21* 1.55 <1 2.76 6.12** <1 7.98** 6.72** 2.54 *1 Grade 8 MR - MT <1 <1 <1 2.53 6.60** <1 •a *l 2.66 *1 2.92 *1 MC - MT 3.51 3.02 <1 <1 \"1 *1 <1 5.00* < 1 1.21 <1 -<1 Grade 10 MR - MT 9.28** 3.18 5.74* 2.53 ..*1 1.20 4.27* 1.43 7.74** *-\\ the^ relationshipibetween : or^ < abstractness and r e c a l l performance ( i . e . CL - AH) as well as between m within concreteness l e v e l s and r e c a l l ( i . e . CH - CL and AH - AL), the d i f -ferences between the mean r e c a l l of each of these p a i r types were computed and are presented i n Figure 5 for each treatment group. It i s f i r s t very apparant that d i f f e r e n c e s i n m within abstract p a i r s c o n s i s t e n t l y produced the greatest d i f f e r e n c e i n r e c a l l regardless of grade l e v e l of treatment condition. Within concrete p a i r s only small differences between CL and CH pa i r s were found, the largest being approximately one hal f of one item i n mean r e c a l l of grade 6 control subjects and grades 6, 8, and 10 r e p e t i t i o n subjects. I n t e r e s t i n g l y , the dif f e r e n c e was i n favor of the lower m CL p a i r s . For the CL - AH di f f e r e n c e , very l i t t l e d i f f e r e n c e i n r e c a l l l e v e l s was found among either trained or control subjects as a function of l e v e l abstractness. The one possible exception i s grade 6 control subjects whose mean r e c a l l of CL p a i r s was approximately one h a l f item higher than with AH p a i r s . For the r e p e t i t i o n group, the influence of abstractness was l e s s 93. Figure 5. Difference i n Mean Re c a l l by Grade as a Function of Level of Abstractness (CL-AH) and Level of Meaningfulness Within Level of Abstractness (CH-CL, AH-AL) « , C L - A H a • C H - C L ^ _ . A H - A L 2.0r Grade G rade G r a d e C O N T R O L R E P E T I T I O N T R A I N E D F I G U R E 5 95. systematic across grades. Both grade 6 and 12 students r e c a l l e d more AH pair s while grades 8 and 10 students performed somewhat better under these i n s t r u c t i o n s with CL p a i r s . Sex Within Treatment Within Grade The r e s u l t s of the analysis of sex differences within treatment con-d i t i o n s within grades are summarized i n Table XII. For concrete p a i r s t h i s test of sex differences was s i g n i f i c a n t for f i v e groups, and i n a l l f i v e cases the r e c a l l of females was superior to that of males. These groups were: Grade 6 Repetition MM = 3.22, MF = 5.00; Grade 8 Trained MM = 5.56, MF = 7.56; Grade 10 Control MM = 5.89, MF = 7.50; Grade 12 Repetition MM = 4.78, MF = 6.33. I t w i l l be noted from Table :XII that these r e s u l t s did not i n t e r a c t with l e v e l of m, but i n three cases (Grade 8 Control, Grade 10 Control, Grade 12 Repetition) did vary as a function of t r i a l s . The m by t r i a l s i n t e r a c t i o n s were also found to be s i g n i f i c a n t f o r grade 8 controls and f o r Grade 8 and 10 r e p e t i t i o n groups. The relevant means are reported i n d e t a i l i n Appendix E. For the r e c a l l of abstract p a i r s females again s i g n i f i c a n t l y exceeded males i n several groups. These were grade 8 trained subjects (MM = 4.61, MF = 6.33) and grade 10 controls (MM = 4.11, MF = 6.34). None of the tests of the influence of t r i a l s or. m were s i g n i f i c a n t but within grade 6 and grade 10 controls the tes t s of the m by (TI - T23) i n t e r a c t i o n were s i g n i f -i c a n t . Again, the relevant means can be found i n Appendix E. Interview Information Following completion of the memory task subjects were requested to complete several a c t i v i t i e s during an interview. The f i r s t of these was so r t i n g the item p a i r s into two categories; those perceived as \"hard\" and those perceived as \"easier\" to remember. These data were recorded for each Table XII F-Ratlos for Sex Comparisons Within Treatment Conditions Within Grades Univariate F's (d.f. = 1, 120) Concrete Noun Pairs Abstract Noun Pairs Within T1-T23 T2-T3 m m x T1-T23 m x T2-T3 Within T1-T23 T2-T3 m m x T1-T23 m x T2-T3 Grade 6 C i l *1 <1 1.91 <1 <1 <1 i l 1.38 < 1 5.07* 1.51 R 6.59** 1.62 1.38 *1 «-l *1 1.09 <1 <1 *1 i l <1 T <1 <1 *1 '1 \"1 <1 <1 i l i l i 1 2.95 i l Grade 8 C 8.81** 1.62 5.51* 1.91 1.15 4.05* 2.93 1.66 <1 <1 3.33 2.95 R 3.41 \"1 2.15 <1 9.49** <1 1.42 2.32 i l i l *1 2.95 T 8.34** 3.65 <1 i l <1 1.01 5.33* <1 <1 *1 3.73 i l Grade 10 C 5.41* 11.33** i l <1 i l 1.01 8.43** i l 3.53 *1 10.35** i l R s x 16 p a i r s ) . I t s use was most frequent among subjects i n the c o n t r o l groups. In terms of percentage of t o t a l possible uses, i t was reported 14%, 11%, 9%, and 3% of the time by grades 6, 8, 10, and 12 subjects i n c o n t r o l groups respec-t i v e l y . It was never reported as a strategy category by subjects given r e p e t i t i o n i n s t r u c t i o n s . Among trained subjects, i t was reported 2%, 2%, 11%, and 1% of the time by grades 6, 8, 10, and 12 r e s p e c t i v e l y . For purposes of furth e r a n a l y s i s , \"Nothing\" responses were combined with repe-t i t i o n responses to form a general non-elaborative category. Frequency of usage of each of the three remaining categories were summed across the four p a i r s within each item type and converted into per-cent of t o t a l p ossible usage. These data are presented i n Figure 6. A number of trends are worthy of note. F i r s t , the reported use of elaborative s t r a t e g i e s (image and sentence) generally increased with age across a l l treatment conditions, while use of the non-elaborative s t r a t e g i e s (categor-ized here as r e p e t i t i o n ) declined. The decrease i n use of r e p e t i t i o n was most apparant i n the c o n t r o l condition and less marked among r e p e t i t i o n and trained subjects. Second, among subjects of a l l grades who were instructed to r e s t r i c t themselves to rote r e p e t i t i o n of p a i r s , t h i s strategy was only reported used 100. Figure 6. Reported Strategy Usage by Treatment Group, Item Type, and Grade 102. by greater than 50 per cent of these subjects with the AL p a i r s . For a l l other p a i r types use of imagery and sentence elaboration was reported to a greater extent than r e p e t i t i o n . T h i r d l y , imagery was c l e a r l y the preferred strategy for concrete p a i r s , regardless of grade of treatment condition, although use of t h i s strategy did increase with age. For abstract p a i r s r e p e t i t i o n was the most frequent-l y reported strategy among con t r o l and r e p e t i t i o n subjects i n the younger three grades, whereas sentence elaboration was the most frequently reported one by trained subjects of a l l grades and by grade 12 students i n a l l experimental groups. One exception to t h i s f or grade 12 students would be noted. For AH p a i r s the trained grade 12 students used both imagery and sentence elaboration equally. When a l l subjects were asked i f anyone had ever t o l d them about \"ways to make information easier to remember\", 55% of the t o t a l sample reported having received some i n s t r u c t i o n . Of t h i s group 38% were given mnemonic i n s t r u c t i o n by a teacher while the remaining 17% mentioned parents and older s i b l i n g s as the source of t h i s information. In terms of strategies being recommended by teachers, 61% of those who had received information from t h i s source indicated that some form of rehearsal of rote r e p e t i t i o n was the advice being given. The remaining 39% reported being instructed to employ some form of elaborative encoding such as rhyming, imaging, embedd-ing within a meaningful n a r r a t i v e , or \"...thinking of some unique meaning that the information has for you\" (grade 12 female). Parents and older s i b l i n g s , i f they offered mnemonic advice, were much more l i k e l y to suggest use of some form of information elaboration (76%) than rote r e p e t i t i o n (24%) unlike teachers. In terms of the t o t a l sample of 144 students then, 45% reported never having received advice concerning memorization s t r a t e g i e s , 103. 27% had been told to use some form of rote repetition, and 28% had had an elaborative strategy recommended to them. CHAPTER V Discussion Five questions were raised to be s p e c i f i c a l l y addressed by th i s r e -search. The r e s u l t s presented i n the previous chapter and t h e i r implica-tions f o r each of these questions w i l l now be considered one by one. Spontaneous Elaboration The f i r s t major issue which t h i s research sought to examine concerned the existence of a developmental trend i n propensity to spontaneously e l a -borate during the age period from grade 6 to grade 12, as s p e c i f i e d i n Question 1. Further, the g e n e r a l i z a b i l i t y of t h i s trend over l e v e l s of abstractness and meaningfulness of the materials was also to be considered (Question 2). Information relevant to these questions i s a v a i l a b l e from several sources i n the r e s u l t s . F i r s t , i t i s evident from the o v e r a l l analysis of grade e f f e c t s that l e v e l of r e c a l l performance on a paired associate task does continue to i n -crease i n a l i n e a r fashion over t h i s age range. This general trend was also found to be consistent across l e v e l s of abstractness and meaningful-ness of nouns and across three repeated t r i a l s . U n t i l performance i s con-sidered by treatment groups, however, i t i s not possible to determine whether t h i s higher l e v e l of performance by older adolescents was due to an increased propensity to spontaneously elaborate. Turning to the second source of relevant information, grade trends with-i n treatment conditions, some further l i g h t can be thrown on this issue. It i s clear from t h i s analysis that the performance of the unprompted con-t r o l s did increase i n a l i n e a r fashion with age, and that t h i s trend held up f o r both concrete and abstract p a i r s , regardless of l e v e l of meaningful-ness. The r e s u l t s of the s e l f - r e p o r t s of strategy usage by these control 1 0 4 . 105. group subjects also confirmed that increasing age was associated with a greater use of elaborative strategies and a decline i n use of non-elabora-I t i v e strategies. In addition, when percent, of items c o r r e c t l y r e c a l l e d was examined f o r con t r o l group subjects by reported strategy usage (non-elabora-t i v e versus elaborative strategy f o r any given p a i r ) , r e c a l l was consistent-l y higher f o r those reporting having used elaboration (6%, 9%, 16% and 12% higher r e c a l l f o r grades 6, 8, 10, and 12, r e s p e c t i v e l y ) , o f f e r i n g some further support f o r the hypothesis that the rate of r e c a l l i s related to use of elaborative s t r a t e g i e s . An i n t e r e s t i n g f i n d i n g was that performance among r e p e t i t i o n group subjects also showed a l i n e a r increase with age. When the strategy usage, reports were considered a moderate increase i n use of elaborative s t r a t e -gies with grade was also found even though overt r e p e t i t i o n of pairs was required. Like control group subjects, i t was also found that higher percentages of r e c a l l (16%, 6%, 6%, and .16% higher f o r grades 6, 8, 10, and 12, respectively) were given by those reporting use of elaborative versus non-elaborative s t r a t e g i e s among these groups. I t would appear that pro-pensity to elaborate i s a factor of s u f f i c i e n t strength that i t becomes extremely d i f f i c u l t to control experimentally once i t i s part of the sub-j e c t ' s memory response r e p e r t o i r e . Pre-task t r a i n i n g i n appropriate elaborative strategies proved to be a very e f f e c t i v e l e v e l e r of performance across grades, as the r e s u l t s of the grade trends within treatment analysis indicated. In keeping with previous evidence of the early development of the ' s p e c i f i c ' component of paired associate performance (Rohwer, 1973), i t would appear that the operation-a l competence required f o r prompted elaboration i s a v a i l a b l e at l e a s t by the s i x t h grade. What i s lacking i n the younger c h i l d , and what appeared 106. not to emerge before the grade 10 l e v e l . i n t h i s research, was an \" i n t e r n a l cueing system\" which would i n i t i a t e these elaborative processes spontaneous-l y . A more de t a i l e d examination of. the issue of t r a i n i n g w i l l be discussed when questions 4 and 5 are considered. Before leaving the r e s u l t s of the grade trends within treatment analyses, one further puzzling outcome should be mentioned. A very strong quadratic trend among the r e p e t i t i o n groups was found with concrete p a i r s , and the data indicated that t h i s was due to unusually high r e c a l l at the grade 8 l e v e l . In f a c t , t h e i r performance was so high that i s was v i r t u a l l y i n d i s t i n g u i s h a b l e from that of the grade 8 trained students who i n turn were lower than the trained group of any grade l e v e l . When the s e l f - r e p o r t data f o r t h i s grade l e v e l was examined for the concrete p a i r s , there was not an unusually high reported use of elaborative strategies by grade 8 r e -p e t i t i o n students. However, there was a generally.greater use of r e p e t i t i o n by a l l three grade 8 groups with the concrete p a i r s which -.could i n part account f o r the low l e v e l of trained group performance. Why grade 8 stu-dents would be so i n c l i n e d to use r e p e t i t i o n as an encoding strategy i s d i f f i c u l t to say. Perhaps they are i n some t r a n s i t i o n a l stage as far as the a v a i l a b i l i t y of an \" i n t e r n a l . cueing system\" i s concerned. They are well aware of the need f o r some form of action to be taken, but are not yet f u l l y capable of i d e n t i f y i n g and selecting.the mental operations which are most l i k e l y to be productive to the task. As a.consequence, they are i n -c l i n e d to use the (perhaps) f i r s t strategy which they i d e n t i f y i n t h e i r r e p e r t o i r e , that of rote r e p e t i t i o n . By examining the performance of a group trained i n both elaborative and nonelaborative strategies and chart-ing the development trends i n the s e l e c t i v e use of one or the other type, t h i s issue could be examined. Further speculation as to the source of th i s 107. pattern of grade 8 r e s u l t s does not seem warranted without t h i s a d d i t i o n a l research, however. The t h i r d and most c r i t i c a l t e s t of the spontaneous elaboration hypo-thesis i s provided by the treatment comparisons within grades a n a l y s i s . P o s i t i v e evidence of spontaneous elaboration of abstract and concrete pairs was found from the onset of t r i a l one f o r grade 10 students. This pattern was also consistent across both l e v e l s of meaningfulness. For grade 12 students, while i t was possible to i n f e r spontaneous elaboration f o r con-crete p a i r s , the s t a t i s t i c a l evidence did not support t h i s conclusion f o r abstract p a i r s . However, v i s u a l inspection of the group means i n Figure 3, the r e s u l t s of the analysis performed on the o r i g i n a l 12 scores, and the evidence of a very high reported usage of elaborative strategies by grade 12 control, and r e p e t i t i o n students a l l point to a conclusion that these students were indeed spontaneous elaborators. A c e i l i n g e f f e c t i n the r e -c a l l of the three treatment groups within t h i s grade l e v e l appears' to be the most l i k e l y cause f o r the lack of s t a t i s t i c a l support f o r t h i s conclusion. When performance f o r concrete p a i r s was examined across t r i a l s , an un-expected e f f e c t emerged at the grade 6 l e v e l . Although the evidence was not straightforward there was a pattern i n d i c a t i v e of spontaneous elaboration on l a t e r t r i a l s . The r e s u l t s of the analysis on the o r i g i n a l 12 scores i n -dicated that t h i s was the case f o r CL pair s on t r i a l two, but that the e f -fe c t had \"washed out\" by t r i a l three. The p o s s i b i l i t y that t h i s was due to a . c e i l i n g e f f e c t among the grade 6 trained students who had almost perfect r e c a l l on t r i a l two should not be overlooked. However, the s e l f - r e p o r t data does o f f e r some further support f o r the contention that at le a s t some grade 6 students were spontaneously elaborating concrete pairs by the end of the t h i r d t r i a l . 108. The evidence, then, suggests that i f performance i s examined over three t r i a l s rather than j u s t one as Rohwer's (Rohwer, et a l , 1 9 7 7 ) and Pressley's (Pressley & Levin, 1 9 7 7 ) research had done, spontaneous elaboration of con-crete pairs may be present at the s i x t h grade l e v e l . While one might qual-i f y the degree to which t h i s behavior of s i x t h grade students can be i n t e r -preted as demonstrating an equivalent l e v e l of \"elaborative propensity\" when compared to grade 1 0 students who elaborate from the onset of t r i a l one, i t does suggest that the competency required to be 'active and p l a n f u l l \" may be present at a younger age.than e a r l i e r research would suggest. I t i s p a r t i c u l a r l y i n t e r e s t i n g that t h i s behavior did not emerge from the onset of the task, and further only emerged with concrete p a i r s f o r these grade 6 students. This data can be interpreted as o f f e r i n g some sup-port f o r a contention made by Case ( 1 9 7 4 ) regarding the development of opera-t i o n a l competence. I t i s h i s suggestion that i f a c h i l d has some prelimin-ary form of a structure required by a task, he may consolidate that s t r u -cture at some point during h i s encounter with the task, providing that the information processing demands of the task do not overly tax information processing space a v a i l a b l e to the c h i l d at t h i s p a r t i c u l a r l e v e l of develop-ment. Translating t h i s concept into terms relevant to the spontaneous e l a -boration of paired associates, i t i s evident from the above r e s u l t s that grade 6 students have those mental operations i n t h e i r r epertoire which are necessary f o r the formation of a semantic r e l a t i o n s h i p between two o r i g i n -a l l y separate e n t i t i e s . This form of elaborative processing i n and of i t -s e l f then must not overly tax the information processing space of the grade 6 c h i l d . What i s missing i n i t i a l l y i s the \"cognitive executive routine\" ( F l a v e l l & Wellman, 1 9 7 6 ) which w i l l cue these processes. I f th i s routine i s to be consolidated during encounter with the task, i t w i l l occur with 109. items which are easy i n the sense of ease of forming an elaboration. Ac-cording to the d e t a i l s of the elaboration hypothesis (Rohwer, 1973) the p r o b a b i l i t y that a semantic r e l a t i o n s h i p w i l l be created i s i n part depend-ent upon the v a r i e t y of meanings which are associated with each member of the p a i r i n i t i a l l y . This greater a v a i l a b i l i t y of a s s o c i a t i v e p o s s i b i l i t i e s may represent a. s u f f i c i e n t l y low l e v e l of demand on information processing space that i t leaves p o t e n t i a l space a v a i l a b l e f o r the consolidation over t r i a l s of an executive routine responsible f o r i n t e r n a l cueing. The abstr-act pairs., bnl.the other hand, because of t h e i r lower l e v e l s of f a m i l i a r i t y and meaningfulness, may f u l l y . t a x the processing space a v a i l a b l e j u s t to generate a semantic r e l a t i o n s h i p . Abstract p a i r s , by t h e i r very abstract nature may place an a d d i t i o n a l demand on information processing space i f they require some preliminary processing to 'concretize' them before an elaborative event or episode can be produced by the c h i l d , a type of pro-cessing r e f e r r e d to by Davidson (1970) as \"hypostatization\". This demand placed by abstract pairs could be a d d i t i o n a l l y great i f a change i n s t r a -tegy was required, a l i k e l y outcome i f the c h i l d was bringing about the se-mantic coupling by generating i n t e r a c t i n g images f o r contrete pairs (as the s e l f - r e p o r t data would indicate) and then found t h i s a d i f f i c u l t task with more abstract p a i r s . Had the t r i a l s been extended beyond three; i t i s possible that spontaneous elaboration would eventually generalize to ab-s t r a c t p a i r s for these grade 6 students as w e l l . This conjecture w i l l have to await the t e s t of further research, however. Formal Operational Thinking and Spontaneous Elaboration The t h i r d question concerned the strength of the r e l a t i o n s h i p between formal operational a b i l i t i e s and propensity to spontaneously elaborate. I t was proposed that the hypotheticodeductive and p r o p o s i t i o n a l thinking s k i l l s 110. of t h i s stage of cognitive development may be l o g i c a l l y r e l a t e d to and predetermine the a v a i l a b i l i t y of the \"executive c o n t r o l system\" conceptual-ized as being responsible f o r the difference between spontaneous and prompt-ed elaborators. The existence of such a r e l a t i o n s h i p was examined by part-i t i o n i n g variance due to l o g i c a l thinking s k i l l s (as assessed by the FOI) and then re-examining r e c a l l data f o r persistence of any developmental trends over grades. While grade trends were found, the strength of the r e l a t i o n s h i p r e f e r r -ed to above was i n s u f f i c i e n t to account for t h i s pattern i n the r e s u l t s . This i s not to say that the competencies assessed by the FOI were t o t a l l y unrelated to r e c a l l performance. Regression of the l o g i c a l thinking scores onto r e c a l l scores indicated that a small (6%) but s i g n i f i c a n t amount of variance i n r e c a l l of concrete p a i r s was accounted for by the former. For abstract p a i r s , the regression r e s u l t s indicated a stronger r e l a t i o n s h i p for AH than for AL p a i r s . Thus, there was some weak evidence of a r e l a t i o n -ship between these two types of performance when data i s collapsed across treatment conditions. The question of major i n t e r e s t was the degree to which formal operation-a l a b i l i t i e s d i f f e r e n t i a l l y predicted performance i n the three treatment conditions. If the r e l a t i o n s h i p s proposed e a r l i e r i n t h i s report concerning propensity to spontaneously elaborate and the hypothetico-deductive and pr o p o s i t i o n a l thinking s k i l l s of the formal operational period have any l o g i c a l v a l i d i t y , than these a b i l i t i e s should be p a r t i c u l a r l y powerful pre-d i c t o r s of control group performance but should be l e s s important i n deter-mining trained group performance. The r e s u l t s of the covariate analysis of grade trends within treatments f a i l e d to support t h i s conjecture. In addi-t i o n , the lack of any evidence of a systematic aptitude-treatment i n t e r a c -t i o n between these variables further f a i l e d to o f f e r any support f o r t h i s r e l a t i o n s h i p . From the foregoing, the only j u s t i f i a b l e conclusion would seem to be- that the a b i l i t i e s assessed by the FOI are re l a t e d to paired associate performance to some extent, but i n a very general manner. No evidence of a case for a unique r e l a t i o n s h i p between these a b i l i t i e s and the \"spontaneous\" component of paired associate performance has been f ound. In attempting to i d e n t i f y the source of variance i n elaborative pro-pensity, cognitive developmental indices of a Piagetian form were selected as t h e o r e t i c a l l y representing a p o t e n t i a l source. These competencies i n hypothesis generation, deductive reasoning and p r o p o s i t i o n a l thinking do appear, i n theory, to be j u s t the type of s k i l l s which would be required of the i n d i v i d u a l i f he/she i s to spontaneously adopt the a c t i v e \"strategy-l i k e approach\" described by Rohwer. The problem i s i n the t r a n s l a t i o n of the s t r u c t u r a l components of Piagetian theory to s p e c i f i c indices which can be used to predict f u n c t i o n a l processes such as memory performance, a point made e a r l i e r i n t h i s report. These d i f f i c u l t i e s are very much akin to those re f e r r e d to by DiVesta (1973) and others (Cronbach & Snow, 1969; Labouvie-V i e f , Levin & Urberg, 1975) as being p a r t i c u l a r l y relevant to aptitude-treat-ment i n t e r a c t i o n research, where more often than not the p r a c t i c e has been to employ\" ... a shotgun approach i n which a large number of aptitude mea-sures are correlated with a minimum of t h e o r e t i c a l j u s t i f i c a t i o n . . . \" (Labouvie-Vief, et a l , 1975, p. 558). The a l t e r n a t i v e approach suggested (DiVesta, 1973) i s the generation, a p r i o r i , of miniature models which ad-dress themselves to the i n v e s t i g a t i o n of selected sub-processes, or to the 112. 'microstructure' of performance. This exercise then demands not only that l o g i c a l analysis of the nature of the p o t e n t i a l r e l a t i o n s h i p s which may e x i s t be done with considerable s p e c i f i c i t y , but even more, demands the precise assessment of the t r a i t or aptitude, as well as the s t r u c t u r i n g of the task such that d e t a i l e d examination of the component processes can be made. In the present research reference was made e a r l i e r to the consid-erable measurement problems involved, i . e . p r e c i s i o n of t r a i t assessment. S p e c i f i c a l l y , the psychometric issues which have been made apparent i n the l i t e r a t u r e i n the assessment of Piagetian formal operational a b i l i t i e s are considerable. Special e f f o r t s were made to avoid the most frequent kinds of c r i t i c i s m s which have arisen i n t h i s body of research. For ex-ample, a cross-section of formal operational tasks r e q u i r i n g both decisions and explanations were used. These were administered and scored according to a standardized procedure. In addition, factor scores rather than raw scores were used i n an attempt to have \"clean\" data le s s contaminated by random sources of f l u c t u a t i o n . \"In s p i t e of these e f f o r t s there i s no as-surance that these scores represented anything remotely l i k e 'presence of Piagetian formal operational structures'. Unless t h i s problem of assess-ment can be resolved, at l e a s t to the point where some measure of consensus i s reached concerning what tasks and procedures represent an adequate test of these a b i l i t i e s , then the v a l i d i t y of r e s u l t s from research of the type conducted here w i l l continue to be a matter of conjecture. The second component of the recommendation made by DiVesta (1973), that of the degree to which the structure of the task conditions allowed f o r s p e c i f i c i t y of the component processes, t h i s aspect has not been f u l l y resolved i n the set of procedures used here for examining spontaneous 113. elaboration. For example, t r a i n i n g or prompting of one group i s employed as an experimental manipulation to represent performance as i t would be i f elaborative strategies are being employed. The r e s u l t s of the s e l f report data i n d i c a t e , however, that a l l subjects do not c o n s i s t e n t l y adopt these elaborative s t r a t e g i e s ; i . e . , grade 8 trained performance and performance of a l l groups with AL p a i r s . Further, as soon as some f l e x i b i l i t y i s a l -lowed, as was done i n the present trained group i n terms of imaginal versus verbal s t r a t e g i e s , then one or more ad d i t i o n a l component processes must be introduced into the task analysis. It was suggested above that there may be a developmental trend with grade i n the sub-processes involved i n simply s e l e c t i n g an elaborative from a non-elaborative when more than one i s prompted. In addition, experimental manipulation of prompts allows for examination of encoding and assumes that once an elaborative event has been formed, i t w i l l be equally r e t r i e v a b l e by a l l age l e v e l s , given one member of the p a i r as a cue. The accumulating evidence to suggest that processes involved i n r e t r i e v a l are also subject to developmental v a r i a t i o n s ( F l a v e l l & Wellman, 1976; Salatas & F l a v e l l , 1976) should not be overlooked. In the present research, for example, there were a number of incidences during a r e c a l l t r i a l when a c h i l d would seem to have some r e c a l l of the elaborative event i t s e l f , but was unable to r e t r i e v e the response term with s u f f i c i e n t s p e c i f i c i t y ( i . e . , Grade 6 male, given the p a i r Desk-Boat: During test t r i a l \"Oh, I know that one. The desk has a , i t ' s some-thing small on the desk. Oh, what i s i t ? I t ' s something long, something strange f o r a desk. Oh, I can't quite get i t . \" ) If there i s some measure of developmental v a r i a t i o n i n a b i l i t y to use one member of the pair as a s p e c i f i c r e t r i e v a l cue for the other member, then the lower l e v e l of 114. performance of the control group subjects would not ju s t be due to f a i l u r e to spontaneously elaborate at the time of encoding. Unless t h i s r e t r i e v a l variance can be i d e n t i f i e d and p a r t i t i o n e d out as w e l l , then attempts to i d e n t i f y aptitude-treatment i n t e r a c t i o n s s p e c i f i c to spontaneous elaboration w i l l be u n l i k e l y to be successful. The r e p e t i t i o n group cannot be overlooked with regard to the degree to which the structure of the task allows f o r s p e c i f i c i t y of component proces-ses. I t i s once again clear from t h i s research that the r e p e t i t i o n i n s t r u c -t i o n s , even when required to be performed o v e r t l y , do not represent an ade-quate manipulation to create baseline performance. Inferences concerning spontaneous elaboration hinge on t h i s assumption, a problem which was p a r t i c u l a r l y troublesome i n the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of the grade 12 data with abstract p a i r s . This lack of adequate co n t r o l over processes would also serve to decrease the likehood of f i n d i n g s i g n i f i c a n t aptitude-treatment i n t e r a c t i o n s . One f i n a l point of the methodological nature should be made with r e -gard to the formal operations and paired associate performance r e l a t i o n -ship. The c h i l d r e n tested i n t h i s research represented a rather r e s t r i c t e d sample of the population to begin with. They were very economically advantaged, and were students i n schools where achievement l e v e l s were higher than p r o v i n c i a l norms. This contributed to a rather r e s t r i c t e d range of scores on the FOI, p a r t i c u l a r l y a f t e r these scores had been sub-jected to a factor a n a l y s i s . As i n any such measurement s i t u a t i o n , t h i s r e s t r i c t e d range lessened the p r o b a b i l i t y of find i n g a s i g n i f i c a n t r e l a -tionship between t h i s measure and any other measure. The major point to be emphasized i s that t h i s may have l e d to an underestimation of the degree 115. of the r e l a t i o n s h i p that a c t u a l l y existed between formal operational a b i l i t i e s and r e c a l l performance.. A r e p l i c a t i o n of the design, using a more diverse subject pool would be required to determine the v a l i d i t y of t h i s contention. In summary, evidence of a developmental trend i n spontaneous elabora-t i o n was found, with some suggestion that the onset for concrete p a i r s i s found at the s i x t h grade l e v e l , while abstract p a i r s are not spontaneously elaborated u n t i l the tenth grade. While the r e s u l t s f o r abstract p a i r s r e p l i c a t e those found i n e a r l i e r research (Greer & Suzuki, 1976), the r e -s u l t s f o r concrete p a i r s suggest that this- a b i l i t y may emerge e a r l i e r than previously thought, perhaps due to the use of three repeated t r i a l s . This performance d i d not vary over l e v e l s of as s o c i a t i v e meaningfulness. A very modest r e l a t i o n s h i p would be found between general r e c a l l performance and formal operational a b i l i t i e s , but no evidence for these l o g i c a l a b i l i t i e s being uniquely r e l a t e d to the spontaneous component of elaboration was found. The further i n v e s t i g a t i o n of t h i s type of r e l a t i o n s h i p i s u n l i k e l y to be f r u i t f u l , unless more s p e c i f i c i t y i n both the measurement of these l o g i c a l thinking a b i l i t i e s and i n the task analysis of and experimental control of component processes involved i n spontaneous elaboration i s achieved. Tr a i n i n g The fourth question concerned the responsiveness of subjects at the various grade l e v e l s to t r a i n i n g i n the use of elaborative s t r a t e g i e s of both the imaginal and verbal s o r t . The r e s u l t s of the R vs T contrast i n the treatment within grades analysis ; provide data relevant to t h i s question. 116. For concrete p a i r s t r a i n i n g c l e a r l y promoted superior r e c a l l for students i n grades 6, 10, and 12. This s u p e r i o r i t y of trained students generalized across both l e v e l s of as s o c i a t i v e meaningfulness but interacted with t r i a l s . For both grade 6 and 10 students the d i f f e r e n c e was greater on t r i a l 2 than on t r i a l 3, and f o r grade 12 students, the d i f f e r e n c e be-tween R and T was greater on t r i a l 1 than on t r i a l 2, which was i n turn greater than that on t r i a l 3. From v i s u a l inspection of the data, i t was apparent that t h i s dimunition was the r e s u l t of a c e i l i n g e f f e c t f o r the trained group. Had there been more item p a i r s , the r e l a t i v e slope of the two l i n e s (see Figure 3) within each grade suggest that the trained group would have maintained i t s s u p e r i o r i t y over the three t r i a l s for grade 6 students. For the older two groups, and for grade 12 students i n p a r t i c u -l a r , the rate of increase over t r i a l s f o r the r e p e t i t i o n group would r e -s u l t i n no s i g n i f i c a n t d i f f e r e n c e by a t h i r d t r i a l , even with a longer l i s t of concrete p a i r s . This pattern of r e s u l t s f o r r e p e t i t i o n groups at the older grade l e v e l s i n fa c t serves to r e i t e r a t e the powerfulness of the propensity to elaborate. It also serves to emphasize the inadequacy of r e p e t i t i o n i n -str u c t i o n s to produce performance representative of a baseline, no-elabora-t i o n l e v e l . It was hoped that the requirement to repeat o v e r t l y would be s u f f i c i e n t to i n h i b i t elaborative processing, and i t does seem to have served t h i s purpose on the i n t i t i a l t r i a l at l e a s t . If performance i s to be extended over several t r i a l s , however some other form of i n s t r u c t i o n s which are engrossing but which w i l l d i v e r t e f f o r t s away from semantic pro-cessing w i l l be necessary. L i k e l y candidates can be found i n the research of Craik & Lockhart (1972). For example, having the i n d i v i d u a l count the number of vowels on one t r i a l , and then the number of l e t t e r s with curved versus s t r a i g h t l i n e s may be e f f e c t i v e procedures for l i m i t i n g semantic processing. Before considering the influence of t r a i n i n g on the processing of abstract p a i r s the grade 8 student performance should be mentioned. There was no i n d i c a t i o n of f a c i l i t a t i o n from t r a i n i n g at t h i s age l e v e l f o r either p a i r type. The analysis of sex dif f e r e n c e s among grade 8 trained subjects did i n d i c a t e that the performance of the females was s i g n i f i c a n t l y higher than males, and that t h i s was the case for both p a i r types. When these two l e v e l s of performance were averaged to represent a group mean' fo r the grade, the r e s u l t i n g value was not d i f f e r e n t from r e p e t i t i o n sub-j e c t s . Why the grade 8 boys should be l e s s responsive to t r a i n i n g than a l l other subjects i s d i f f i c u l t to fathom, and further speculation on the source-of t h i s performance seems p o i n t l e s s . It does serve to emphasize again the considerable v a r i a b i l i t y i n elaborative s k i l l s among i n d i v i d u a l s within any given age l e v e l , however, and suggests the need for an a l t e r n a -t i v e approach than designation of groups by the global v a r i a b l e of grade or age. If future investigations of the elaboration hypothesis are to be f r u i t f u l , a preferred experimental approach to the present one might be the use of a within-subjects design. Each subject would be required to l e a r n l i s t s f i r s t under control i n s t u c t i o n s , then under antagonistic prompt-ing, and f i n a l l y given e x p l i c i t or augmented e x p l i c i t prompts, so that each subject could serve as h i s own c o n t r o l . A d d i t i o n a l groups would have to be included to allow f or i d e n t i f i c a t i o n of variance due to p r a c t i c e e f f e c t , but t h i s type of approach would seem to o f f e r more con t r o l over i d i o s y n c r a t i c v a r i a t i o n s i n i n d i v i d u a l performance such as the grade 8 males seemed to 118. manifest i n t h i s research. For abstract p a i r s , only the grade 10 performance provided clear e v i -dence of a f a c i l i t a t i v e e f f e c t of t r a i n i n g . For the grade 12 students the contrast did not reach s t a t i s t i c a l s i g n i f i c a n c e , but the data themselves indi c a t e that t h i s was due to the inadequacy of the r e p e t i t i o n i n s t r u c t i o n s to i n h i b i t elaboration rather than to a f a i l u r e of trained subjects to produce elaborative events. For grade 6 the r e s u l t s of the analysis on the 12 o r i g i n a l scores indicated that t r a i n i n g did i n fac t f a c i l i t a t e r e c a l l but only for AH pair s and only by t r i a l 3. In summary, students as young as 11 years of age are c l e a r l y . capable of carrying out the basic operations necessary for elaboration of noun p a i r s when prompted to do so. Level of meaningfulness only within the abstract p a i r s , but not within concrete p a i r s was found to l i m i t the scope of gener-a l i t y of these operations, however. It would appear that some minimal l e v e l of \"richness of as s o c i a t i v e p o s s i b i l i t i e s \" f o r a given c h i l d must be met i f a semantic r e l a t i o n s h i p i s to be su c c e s s f u l l y created, at le a s t given the ten second study i n t e r v a l used i n t h i s research. This s i g n i f i c a n t d i f f e r e n c e associated with l e v e l of m within abstract p a i r s i s doubly i n -t e r e s t i n g when compared to the r e s u l t s of a previous study (Greer & Suzuki, 1976) which found grade 6 students unable to benefit from t r a i n i n g with both AL (Mm = 3.54) and AH (Mm = 4.96) p a i r s . In the present research AH pa i r s with a mean m of 5.55 were elaborated but AL pair s with a mean m of 3.04 were not. Thus, i f a minimal l e v e l of asso c i a t i v e meaningfulness does exist for grade 6 students i t would appear from these two sets of r e s u l t s to be somewhere i n the i n t e r v a l between 4.96 and 5.55. Further research w i l l be required to determine the r e l i a b i l i t y of the present f i n d i n g s , and 119. to allow f o r a more thorough examination of the boundaries of t h i s s e n s i -t i v i t y to l e v e l of asso c i a t i v e meaningfulness. The f i f t h and f i n a l question concerned the a b i l i t y of subjects to use more than one strategy i n which they had been trained, and to use these s t r a t e g i e s p r e f e r e n t i a l l y i n response to changing c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s of the pa i r s to be learned. From the r e s u l t s of the s e l f - r e p o r t data i t i s appar-ent that students at a l l grade l e v e l s reported use of both imaginal and verbal s t r a t e g i e s across the four p a i r types, as well as making spontaneous use of non-elaborative rote rehearsal. There i s l i t t l e doubt then that pre-adolescents and adolescents w i l l employ more than one strategy i f they are prompted to do so. With regard to the second aspect of t h i s question; i n t e r p r e t i n g Paivio's (1971) dual coding hypothesis, i t was anticipated that verbal elaboration would be the preferred mode of elaboration for abstract p a i r s while both imaginal and verbal elaboration could be used with equivalent ease with the concrete p a i r s . Contrary to the expectation f o r concrete p a i r s , there was a very cl e a r preference f o r imagery which increased with age to the point where verbal and non-elaborative forms of elaboration v i r t u a l l y d i s -appeared by grade 12. It i s the youngest age group who tend to use the two elaborative forms with equal frequency. S e l e c t i v i t y i s also seen among the oldest group for sentence elabora-t i o n of the AL p a i r s , i n agreement with the pre d i c t i o n s of the dual coding hypothesis. In f a c t among a l l ages verbal elaboration was the form used i f an elaborative event was produced at a l l . It i s i n t e r e s t i n g to note with these AL p a i r s that the compulsion to 'do something' by these trained subjects was s u f f i c i e n t l y strong that when an elaborative event was not 120. forthcoming, they spontaneously defaulted to rote r e p e t i t i o n . That i s , once the i n d i v i d u a l r e a l i z e s , either from i n t e r n a l prompting, by an executive control system of from external prompting, that something must be done now i f l a t e r r e c a l l i s to be ensured, then the elaborative process w i l l default to a rote r e p e t i t i o n operation i f no other option i s possib l e , given l i m i t -ations placed by as s o c i a t i v e p o s s i b i l i t i e s of the material for the c h i l d . The strong preference f o r a sing l e elaborative process (imagery) among older adolescents with the concrete p a i r s may be interpreted i n several ways. F i r s t , i t may simply be a procedure to avoid the a d d i t i o n a l processing de-mand p o t e n t i a l l y involved i n switching s t r a t e g i e s when not absolutely r e -quired. The preference f o r imaginal elaboration of concrete p a i r s then represents a \"labor saving device\". A l t e r n a t i v e l y , Paivio (1971) has suggested that concrete p a i r s are not only equally amenable to imaginal or verbal modes of processing, the imaginal mode has an a d d i t i o n a l advan-tage. Images, i t i s Paivio's contention, have the added advantage of ser-ving as \"conceptual pegs\". When an i n t e r a c t i v e image i s formed, the f i r s t member of the pair serves as a peg form which the second member can be 'hung', ready for r e t r i e v a l . The high preference f o r the imaginal mode for concrete p a i r s and the equivalent use of imagery for AH p a i r s by grade 12 students would o f f e r some support for t h i s suggestion. It i s further pos-s i b l e to conjecture that the recognition of t h i s added s u p e r i o r i t y of the imaginal mode i s an a d d i t i o n a l component of the development of the 'cogni-t i v e executive routine' responsible for such metamemorial functions. The pattern of r e s u l t s i n Figure 6 f or concrete p a i r s do in d i c a t e the major s h i f t for trained subjects to p r e f e r e n t i a l use of imagery to be at the grade 10 l e v e l , the time at which spontaneous elaboration i s also found to 121. emerge i n behavior. For the AH p a i r s , however, equal use of imagery and verbal strategies i s not found u n t i l the grade 12 l e v e l , and s e l e c t i v e use of verbal s t r a t e g i e s for AL p a i r s does not occur u n t i l grade 12, even though grade 10 students are spontaneously elaborating these pa i r s ( i . e . , the exe-cutive routine i s supposedly f u n c t i o n a l ) . Thus, the degree to which the data support the contention that s e l e c t i v e strategy use i s related to devel-opment of cognitive processes s i m i l a r to those responsible for spontaneous elaboration i s tenuous at best. The t h i r d , and what the writer f e e l s to be the most l i k e l y explanation for the p r e f e r e n t i a l use of imagery f o r concrete p a i r s i s the nature of the sorting task from which t h i s information arose. Students were required to place each pair i n one and only one category to indic a t e strategy usage (unfortunately precluding the opportunity to assess the degree to which 'dual coding' i n both the imaginal and verbal modes may have been reported). Thus, the task i t s e l f may have served to encourage the reporting of consis-tent strategy usage, p a r t i c u l a r l y i f the subject was aware of the categories inherent i n the l i s t i t s e l f ( i . e . , concrete versus abstract p a i r s ) . In addition, while t h i s s e l f - r e p o r t data i s i n t e r e s t i n g and gives some general sense of the pattern of elaborative and nonelaborative strategy usage by the adolescents, a provisory note should be made. Because the: information i s given a f t e r - t h e - f a c t and s e l f - r e p o r t , i t i s possible that there i s a consider-able gap between what the student says he did and what he \"believes\" he did (assuming here that the in t r o s p e c t i v e process does not allow for a report of what a c t u a l l y occured). For example, the subject may believe that he/she generated an image i n the process of elaborating ' d e v i l - i d e a ' , but i s h e s i -tant to say so because of anticipated d i f f i c u l t y i n describing the image i f 1 2 2 . requested to do so. As a consequence, he/she reports having generated the phrase \"a d e v i l of an idea\" to avoid the need for d e s c r i p t i o n of h i s image of \"a l i t t l e red d e v i l with a l i g h t bulb f l a s h i n g over h i s head\", or some such thing. It i s doubtful that having subjects o v e r t l y generate elabora-tors during study t r i a l s would avoid t h i s p o s s i b i l i t y and produce a more accurate p i c t u r e of strategy usage. In s p i t e of the l i m i t a t i o n s of data of t h i s s o r t , i t i s believed that t h i s type of information serves to pro-vide further credence to the more empirical and objective data. Summarizing the information on elaborative t r a i n i n g , preadolescents are c l e a r l y capable of carrying out the mental operations necessary to generate elaborative events of concrete and abstract p a i r s when given imaginal and verbal prompts. A minimal l e v e l of a s s o c i a t i v e meaningfulness must be met by the nouns, however, i f t h i s process i s to be s u c c e s s f u l l y completed. When t h i s minimal l e v e l i s not met the most l i k e l y outcome i s the use of rote r e p e t i t i o n of information. A l l grades were prepared and able to use more than one strategy thoughout the mixed l i s t . In terms of r e l a t i v e preference, reported use of imaginal forms of elaboration was c l e a r l y higher for concrete p a i r s , while verbal forms of elaboration were most often reported for abstract. General Conclusion and Implications At a more general l e v e l of consideration, the r e s u l t s r e l a t e d to the t r a i n i n g component as well as those concerned with spontaneous elaboration suggest that a c h i l d , when given some d i r e c t i o n i n the use of h i s a v a i l a b l e cognitive s k i l l s , w i l l go on to r e f i n e these and to develop more e f f i c i e n t ones on h i s own. In addition, not only does t h i s type of short-term strategy i n s t r u c t i o n lead to achievement gains, as the r e s u l t s with s i x t h 123. grade ch i l d r e n indicated. It also led to a very d e f i n i t e change i n a t t i - : tude. It was demonstrated i n the data regarding perception of item d i f f i -c u l t y by treatment group that younger subjects i n p a r t i c u l a r l e s s frequently reported items as d i f f i c u l t to learn when provided with guidance concerning p o t e n t i a l l y useful processing s t r a t e g i e s . The research also suggests that optimal timing of such intervention i s both desirable and s p e c i f i a b l e . For example, the r e s u l t s indicated that grade 6 students were not only very receptive to t r a i n i n g such that i t brought perfomance up to a c e i l i n g l e v e l . It was also indicated that the ' extended experience with \"easy\" concrete nouns over three t r i a l s for the control students may have been s u f f i c i e n t to f a c i l i t a t e some consolidation of an executive control system responsible for spontaneous elaboration. The p o t e n t i a l e x i s t s f o r uncovering other such c r i t i c a l periods which w i l l allow for optimal use of i n s t r u c t i o n s . With such timing, the c h i l d i s not ju s t provided with ready-made knowledge, but he i s provided with a c t i v i t i e s of the type which w i l l allow him to develop and consolidate h i s own process-ing s k i l l s relevant to that knowledge. The r e s u l t s further suggest that optimal timing of p a r t i c u l a r content areas i s desirable, an idea which i s c e r t a i n l y not novel ' . (Furth, 1970; Rohwer, 1971). If the c h i l d ' s e x i s t i n g cognitive structures are not recep-t i v e to the i n t e g r a t i o n and i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of new information i n a meaning-f u l way, then short of rote learning over extended t r a i n i n g sessions, l i t t l e progress w i l l be made. : This point i s i l l u s t r a t e d by the pattern of p e r f o r -mances of younger subjects with the AL p a i r s . While the r e s u l t s r e l a t e d to formal operational a b i l i t i e s and elabor-a t i v e propensity were somewhat disappointing, they do serve to emphasize a 124. point which has relevance both to future research i n memory development, as w e l l as to the i n v e s t i g a t i o n of i n s t r u c t i o n a l p r a c t i c e s . If one i s to suc-c e s s f u l l y i d e n t i f y the conditions which produce optimal performance, or which a c t i v a t e the processes responsible for such performance, one must consider the microstructure of the task i t s e l f . I t i s u n l i k e l y that u n t i l the sub-processes involved i n any new learning have been uncovered and s p e c i f i e d that one can e f f e c t i v e l y p r e d i ct the i n s t r u c t i o n a l conditions necessary and s u f f i c i e n t to f a c i l i t a t e the a c q u i s i t i o n of these new cogni-t i v e a b i l i t i e s for any given developmental l e v e l . As Davidson (1970) has suggested, i f we are to f a c i l i t a t e self-generated learning rather than inducing learning, then the task of education i s the working out of the balance between structure and sequencing of materials and the capacity of the learner. F i n a l l y , perhaps the most dis t u r b i n g aspect of t h i s research was the f i n d i n g that almost one h a l f of these c h i l d r e n had never received advice concerning a s k i l l as basic as storage and r e t r i e v a l of information. Even more dis t u r b i n g was the fact that the vast majority of teachers did not provide strategy information, and those who did recommened r e l i a n c e on some unproductive form of rote r e p e t i t i o n . It i s eminently c l e a r that the task of providing teachers with the knowledge and materials necessary for t h i s e s s e n t i a l type of i n s t r u c t i o n i s not being f u l f i l l e d , without a pro-gram of research of which the present study represents a small part, t h i s need cannot be i d e n t i f i e d , nor the merits of various forms of intervention assessed, nor the parameters i n f l u e n t i a l to success of such p r a c t i c e s be determined. As Davidson aptly stated with regard to t h i s type of research: What i s important, i t seems to me i s to take the information 125. produced by such research and find ways to translate that infor-mation into teachable cognitive strategies. That i s , we must find out what can be done by way of teaching the child to generate his own linguistic structures, his own mnemonic and his own effective images. In fact, a wide variety of teachable cognitive strategies would help the child become a relatively independent learner, and the independent learner, I maintain, i s the preferred \"product\" of education.\" (1970, p. 9). 126. BIBLIOGRAPHY Altemeyer, R.A., Fulton, F. & Berney, K.M. Long-term memory improvement: Confirmation of a find i n g by Piaget. C h i l d Development, 1969, 40, 845-857. Anders on, T.W. & Rubin, H. S t a t i s t i c a l inference i n factor a n a l y s i s . 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Paired Associate L i s t S e l e c t i o n Procedures; The 3 2 nouns (16 concrete, 16 abstract).:making up the 16 item paired associate l i s t were selected from among a pool of 96 nouns for which m data for grades 6 , 8 , and 1 0 had been previously c o l l e c t e d using Nobel's ( 1 9 5 2 ) procedure (Greer & Suzuki, 1 9 7 6 ) . The i n i t i a l c r i t e r i a for the s e l e c t i o n of these 96 nouns from among those provided by Paivio, Y u i l l e , and Madigan ( 1 9 6 8 ) were ( 1 ) a s s o c i a t i v e mean-ingf ulness r a t i n g of 4,00 or greater on the adult norms; ( 2 ) frequency count of 3 0 or greater on the Thornaike-Lorge ( 1 9 4 4 ) scale; ( 3 ) one hal f of the nouns had scaled concreteness values of 6 . 5 0 or greater, and the second h a l f of the nouns had values of 3 . 5 0 or l e s s and were designated as abstract. Within each grade and abstractness l e v e l mean m values were transformed into £ scores for each noun. A l l those nouns with z scores of . 5 0 or greater and - . 5 0 or less within each grade were then i d e n t i f i e d with the int e n t i o n of se l e c t i n g from among these eight concrete and eight abstract nouns with z_ scores greater than or equal to . 5 0 at a l l three grades ( i . e . high m), and eight concrete and eight abstract nouns with z_ scores of less than or equal to - . 5 0 i n a l l three grades ( i . e . low m). Unfortun-a t e l y , an i n s u f f i c i e n t number of nouns met these c r i t e r i a and some compro-mises were necessary to generate a S u f f i c i e n t l y large pool of usable items. The f i n a l s e l e c t i o n i s provided i n Tables A l and A 2 . As can be seen, among CH nouns one noun i n grade 6 (baby), one i n grade 8 (house) and two i n grade 1 0 (flower, ship) had z_ less than . 5 0 but greater than zero. Among the CL nouns one noun i n grade 6 ( d o l l ) , one i n grade 8 ( f o r k ) , and three i n grade 1 0 ( i r o n , s t a r , d o l l ) had £ greater than - . 5 0 but less than zero. 137. Table A l Ass o c i a t i v e Meaningfulness Data for 16 Concrete Nouns Grade 6 Grade 8 Grade 10 M M M High m apple b i r d f i r e tree baby flower house ship M S.D. 7.00 8.25 7.75 7.88 6.76 7.28 7.79 7.60 7754 .49 .68 2.14 1.55 1.70 .40 1.00 1.60 1.38 9.00 9.19 9.48 9.24 10.95 10.25 8.56 9.64 9754 .75 .63 .81 1.08 .86 2.46 1.81 .22 1.23 9.83 10.33 11.17 10.43 9.28 8.55 8.92 8.27 9760 1.01 1.48 1.93 2.68 2.02 .99 .34 .67 .09 Low m b a r r e l f l a g hammer pipe fork i r o n star d o l l M S.D. 4.21 5 .50 5.20 5 .67 55.20 5.54 5.88 6.17 3742 .59 .2.58 .1.07 .1.42 - .88 -1.42 -1.03 - .63 • .29 6.12 7.33 7.59 6.24 8.12 6.04 7.44 7.11 7700 .77 -2.08 - .94 . .70 • 1.97 - .20 -2.15 . .84 -1.15 7.00 7.58 7.27 6.21 7.09 7.96 8.07 7.63 7735 .60 -1 .04 - .53 - .80 -1 .75 - .96 - U 9 - .09 - .48 138. Table A2 As s o c i a t i v e Meaningfulness Data for 16 Abstract Nouns Grade 6 M Grade 8 M z Grade 10 M z High m Tdeath d e v i l fun law science time love dream M S.D. 6.33 6.24 5.28 5.84 5.68 5.72 4.60 4.71 5 3 1 . .64 2.33 2.24 1.29 1.84 1.68 1.72 .61 .72 7.12 8.15 8.14 8.55 8.30 8.45 7.55 6.08 7TW .844 .65 1.33 1.33 1.60 1.43 1.53 ..94 .03 8.07 7.10 6.59 7.48 8.07 7.83 6.23 6.36 7722 .76 2.05 1.22 .79 1.54 2.04 1.84 .49 .60 Low m fate f a u l t method pride shame tru t h opinion a b i l i t y 2.67 2.96 2.71 3.21 3.04 2.88 3.21 3.67 • 1.30 • 1.02 • .77 • .77 • .94 • 1.09 • .77 • .31 3.29 4.20 3.80 4.26 5.32 3.92 4.67 4.07 -1.89 .1.28 .1.54 • 1.24 • .54 .1.46 • .99 • 1.36 4.00 4.54 3.43 4.67 4.27 4.32 5.24 4.63 • 1.39 • .86 • 1.87 • .83 • 1.16 • 1.12 • .35 • .86 M S.D. 3.04 .32 4.19 .60 4.39 .53 139. Among the AH nouns one noun i n grade 8 (dream) and one i n grade 10 (love) had z less than .50 but greater than zero, and among AL nouns one noun i n grade 6 ( a b i l i t y ) and one i n grade 10 (opinion) had z greater than -.50 but less than zero. Four seperate analyses of variance were performed on the m data for each of these groups of eight nouns (CL, CH, AL, AH) to examine differences across grades. In a l l four analyses these differences were highly s i g -n i f i c a n t (CH: F(2,28) = 17.9.6, p< .001; CL: F(2,28) = 23.54, p< .001; AH: F(2,28) = 19.20, p< #001; AL: F(2,28) = 16.80, p<.001). From the means presented i n Tables A l and A2 i t can be seen that the pattern i n each case was a large and s i g n i f i c a n t difference between grades 6 and 8 and a very s l i g h t difference between the means for grade 8 and 10. To allow for examination of the differences i n m over item concreteness and to v e r i f y that high m items did d i f f e r s i g n i f i c a n t l y from low m items wit h i n each concreteness l e v e l , analyses of variance were performed for each grade l e v e l . The r e s u l t s for a l l three grades confirmed the f a c t that concrete items were s i g n i f i c a n t l y higher i n mean m than abstract items (Grade 6: F(l,28) = 137.87, p<.001; Grade 8: F(l,28) = 741.07, p<.001; Grade 10: F(l,28) = 102,01, p * .001) and that high m items were s i g n i f i c a n t l y higher i n mean m than low m items (Grade 6: E(l,28) = 154.71, p^.001; Grade 8: F(l,28) = 134.71, p<.001; Grade 10: F(l,28) = 91.97, p*.001). In addition, the lack of a s i g n i f i c a n t i n t e r a c t i o n between concreteness and m l e v e l s i n a l l three grades v e r i f i e d that, as planned, CH items were s i g n i f i c a n t l y d i f f e r e n t from CL items, and that AH items were s i g n i f i c a n t l y d i f f e r e n t from AL items Because of the strong negative r e l a t i o n s h i p between concreteness l e v e l and m at a l l three grades, i t was not possible to select items that 140. would allow for examination of the influence of abstractness independent of l e v e l of meaningfulness i n the l i s t as a whole. In se l e c t i n g items i t was possible however, to achieve equivalence i n m le v e l s among the eight CL and the eight AH nouns. Analyses of variance performed on the m values of these 16 items at each grade l e v e l confirmed that these two subsets of nouns did not d i f f e r c s i g n i f i c a n t l y (Grade 6: F(l,14)< 1.00; Grade 8: F(l,14) = 3.86, p> .05; Grade 10: F(l,14)< 1.00). Thus, within the t o t a l noun pair l i s t t h i s subset of p a i r s permitted examination of the influence of l e v e l of abstractness on memory performance independent of l e v e l of meaningfulness. 141. Appendix B Student Response Sheets for Formal Operations Instrument 142. Page 1 Name _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Male Female Grade ______ B i r t h Date 143. Page 2 If I put t h i s f l a t piece of clay back on the scale w i l l the two pans s t i l l be at d i f f e r e n t heights l i k e they are now? YES NO Why? If I put t h i s f l a t piece of clay back on the scale w i l l the two pans be at the same height the way they were before one b a l l of clay was removed? YES NO Why? 144. Page 3 1. I f I place the sausage i n the glass, w i l l the water go above the rubber band? YES NO Why? 2. I f I place the sausage i n the glass, w i l l the water go below the rubber band? YES NO Why?. , 3. I f I place the sausage i n the glass, w i l l the water go r i g h t back up to the same l e v e l as the rubber band? YES NO Why? . 145. Page 4 Here are two tes t tubes f i l l e d with equal amounts of water and two metal cubes. One i s made of l i g h t aluminum and the other i s heavy brass. These two cubes are exactly the same size but the brass one i s heavier. Aluminum Brass When the aluminum cube i s put into one test tube the water comes up the test tube a l i t t l e higher. 0 I f the brass heavy cube i s put into the other test tube, how high w i l l the water come up? W i l l the water come up higher than the other t e s t tube that contains the aluminum cube, lower than that one, or about the same amount? Draw a l i n e on the test tube to show how much the water w i l l come up. Explain why you think t h i s i s what w i l l happen. 1 4 6 . i Page 5 Do you think the piece of cl a y w i l l f l o a t now that i t has been f l a t t e n e d out? YES NO Why? ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 147. Page 6 I f I put t h i s piece that i s l e f t over into the water, w i l l i t s t i l l sink? YES NO Why? 148. Page 7 If I put t h i s l i t t l e piece i n now, w i l l i t f l o a t ? YES NO Why? 149. Page 8 Do you think we could ever get a piece of clay small enough so that i t would f l o a t ? YES S NO Why? 150. Page 9 This problem involves mixing chemicals together to make a yellow c o l o r . Here are four b o t t l e s of chemicals. Each one i s d i f f e r e n t . There i s also a small b o t t l e c a l l e d \"g\" which contains an a c t i v a t i n g s o l u t i o n . When \"g\" i s added to c e r t a i n combinations of the other four chemicals, they produce a yellow c o l o r . Here are two glasses. Each contains some of the chemicals from the b o t t l e s shown above. When \"g\" i s added to the glass marked A, i t turns yellow. When \"g\" i s added to the glass marked B, i t stays the same and doesn't turn yellow. Your problem i s to figu r e out which combinations of chemicals along with \"g\" make the yellow c o l o r . Write down a l l the combinations of chemicals you would t r y out to f i n d which ones make the yellow c o l o r . The amount of each chemical used i s not important. You can assume that you have a l l the chemicals and a l l the tes t tubes you need and w i l l not run out. Make a l i s t here of a l l the combinations you would t r y . 151. Page 10 We t r i e d out a l l the d i f f e r e n t combinations of chemicals with \"g\" and found that these were the r e s u l t s : NO Color YES_j_ Yellow Color 1 + g 2 + g 3 + g 4 + g 1 + 2 + g 1 + 4 + g 2 + 3 + g 2 + 4 + g 3 + 4 + g 1 + 2 + 4 + g 1 + 3 + 4 + g 2 + 3 + 4 + g 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 1 + 3 + g 1 + 2 + 3 + g + g 1. What e f f e c t does Chemical Number 2 have on the reaction of making the yellow color? 2. What tes t or tests would you t r y out to see i f these conclusions you made i n Question 1 are correct? Why? (You may have done these tests e a r l i e r but i f you were double-checking, which tests would you do again on the e f f e c t of Chemical Number 2?) 3. What e f f e c t does Chemical Number 4 have on the reaction of making the yellow color? 4. What tes t or tests would you conduct again to double-check your answer to Question 3? Why? 152. Page 11 Here i s a problem for you to think about: One summer a community offered a s p e c i a l hockey school to improve goal scoring. That winter a coach was looking over the records of goals scored by a l l the boys who played i n the community league. The coach saw hockey school p a r t i c i p a n t s who scored a l o t of goals, and boys who didn't attend the s p e c i a l hockey school, some of whom^ scored a l o t of goals and some who hardly scored any at a l l . Can the coach say anything d e f i n i t e about the e f f e c t of the summer hockey school on goals scored with t h i s information? YES NO Why do you think that? 153. Page 12 Here i s another problem to think about: I was looking at my friend's rose garden. He had been spraying h i s rose leaves with a chemical to k i l l a leaf disease. I saw sprayed leaves which were healthy and I saw unsprayed leaves, some of which were diseased and some healthy. Can I say anything d e f i n i t e about the e f f e c t of the spray on the disease with t h i s information? YES NO Why do you think that? 154. Appendix C Pilot Testing of Formal Operations Instrument 155. Formal Operations Instrument P i l o t Testing Subjects. A t o t a l of 65 students were administered the instrument during p i l o t t e s t i n g . These included 23 (11 females, 12 males) grade 6 students, 15 (5 females, 10 males) grade 7 students who were members of two classes i n a parochial elementary school i n the Vancouver area, and 26 (21 females, 5 males) undergraduates enrolled i n the Faculty of Education of the U n i v e r s i t y of B r i t i s h Columbia. Mean ages of the three groups were 10.8, 12.0, and 21.4 years r e s p e c t i v e l y . Procedure. Administration of the items was undertaken i n classroom groupings. Order of presentation of items was as follows: weight con-servation, volume conservation, density conservation, 'Rose\" problem of the p r o p o s i t i o n a l l o g i c set, Chemicals task, 'Hockey' problem of the pro-p o s i t i o n a l l o g i c set. The d e t a i l s of the method of presentation are as s p e c i f i e d i n the main body of t h i s report. Care was taken to ensure that a l l subjects understood what was required of them, and were given adequate time to complete each problem to t h e i r own s a t i s f a c t i o n . These times were approximately 70, 65, and 50 minutes for grades 6, 7, and college r e s p e c t i v e l y . In the week following the group t e s t i n g , the pendulum problem dev-eloped by Inhelder and Piaget (1958) was i n d i v i d u a l l y administered to 20 of the grade 6 students, the intent being to determine the degree to which performance on t h i s task r e l a t e d to that on the v e r b a l l y presented Peel measures of p r o p o s i t i o n a l l o g i c . Each c h i l d was presented with a pendulum i n the form of a 20 inch s t r i n g suspended from a clamp which was attached to a metal stand, along with a set of three weights (20, 50, 100 grams) 156. which could be fastened to a loop on the end of the s t r i n g . The s t r i n g could be shortened by wrapping i t around the clamp. As well as s i z e of weight and length of s t r i n g , the other two variables which could be mani-pulated were height of release point and amount of force applied. Each c h i l d was shown the pendulum and was asked to carry out tests to t r y to f i n d out what i t was that made the pendulum swing f a s t or slow. A l l combin-ations of variables t r i e d by the c h i l d and statements made were recorded by the experimenter. When a c h i l d indicated that he or she had completed experimentation and had not offered an explanation for a l l four v a r i a b l e s , probes were given by the experimenter i n the form \"What about the e f f e c t °^ . Does i t have anything to do with how f a s t or slow the pendulum swings?\" \"What tests would you do to prove that?\" In a d d i t i o n to the above t e s t i n g , eight further grade 6 students who were not members of the above group, 3but who had been given the f u l l Formal Operations Instrument i n t h e i r classroom group were also i n d i v i d u a l l y administered a version of the chemicals task p r i o r to group administration. The procedure described by Inhelder and Piaget (1958) was followed, with the exception that Chemicals 2 and 4 gave the p o s i t i v e r e a c t i o n , Chemical33 was n e u t r a l , and Chemical 1 n e u t r a l i z e d the yellow r e a c t i o n . A l l sessions were recorded on e l e c t r o n i c tape. I f a c h i l d had not s p e c i f i c a l l y dealt with the influence of chemicals 1 and 3 by the end of the session, the experimenter asked: \"What about chemical , does i t have any e f f e c t on the reaction? How would you t e s t that to make sure?\" Results (1) Piagetian Formal Operations Instrument: Scoring of a l l items was done according to the c r i t e r i a s p e c i f i e d i n Chapter I I I of t h i s work. C l a s s i f i c a t i o n of explanations i n response to the two Peel problems was 157. done Independently by two judges. Interrater r e l i a b i l i t i e s for the Hockey problem was .98, for the Rose problem was .93, and for both problems com-bined was .96. A summary of the item mean scores by grade i s presented i n Table C l . One way analyses of variance performed on these scores by grade were a l l highly s i g n i f i c a n t (F(2,61) = 7.58, 16.02, 12.42, 11.19, 25.05, and 28.15 for weight, volume, density, chemicals task, Peel problems, and t o t a l score, r e s p e c t i v e l y ) . The r e s u l t s of multiple comparisons among the grade means are presented i n Table.Cl. In a l l cases but one (Chemicals task), grade 7 performance was s i g n i f i c a n t l y higher than that of the grade 6 students. The performance of college students was i n turn s i g n i f i c a n t l y higher than the grade 7 students i n a l l cases but one (density conservation). This unusually high performance of the grade 7 students on the density items (11 out of 15 students received perfect scores and no student scored less than f i v e out of a possible 8) proved to be p r i m a r i l y due to an i n s t r u c t i o n a l e f f e c t i n that t h i s topic had been s p e c i f i c a l l y dealt with i n science cl a s s i n the week immediately preceeding t e s t i n g . To provide some index of consistency of i n d i v i d u a l performance across items, i n t e r c o r r e l a t i o n s among item scores and between item scores and t o t a l t e s t scores were computed. From Table C2 i t can beeseen that the majority of these c o r r e l a t i o n s were s i g n i f i c a n t l y d i f f e r e n t from zero. Exceptions to t h i s were those in v o l v i n g the density item, and that between weight conservation and the chemicals task. Again, the uniqueness of the re s u l t s of density performance i s probably due to Grade 7 students, as mentioned above. To examine the nature of the d i s t r i b u t i o n of scores at the three grade l e v e l s , the percentage of subjects at each grade l e v e l whose t o t a l Table C l FOI Item Mean Scores by Grade, and Grade Comparisons Grade 6 Grade 7 College t Ratios (df = 61) M S.D. M S.D. M S.D. 6 vs 7 7 vs C o l . Weight ( 4 ) a 2.48 1.68 3.27 1.03 3.85 .78 4.29** 2.34* Volume (8) 3.96 2.14 4.93 2.46 7.12 1.51 2.12* 5.44** Density (8) 4.39 1.31 7.40 1.12 5.38 2.43 7.19** 5.45** Chemicals Task (23) 10.43 4.71 11.00 6.52 17.15 5.29 .46 6.55** Peel Problems (20) 4.70 3.11 7.33 3.98 13.38 5.45 2.61* 6.82** Total (63) 26.30 9.20 33.93 9.96 47.08 10S199 3.40** 6.65** a. Total score p o s s i b l e . * p <• . 05 ** p< .01 Table C2 Product Moment Correlations Among FOI Items for P i l o t Sampl e (n = 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 1. Weight - .51** .16 .20 .33** .46** 2. Volume .12 .42** .54** .68** 3. Density - .18 .17 .37** 4. Chemicals Task - .53** .83** 5. Peel Problems -i .85** 6. Total Score ** p< .01 160. score was less than 20, greater than 54, or within each 5-point i n t e r v a l between these two extremes was c a l c u l a t e d . These data are presented i n Figure C l . The p o s i t i v e skew of the d i s t r i b u t i o n s of the two younger groups and the negative skew i n that of the college students i s r e a d i l y apparent even with these small samples. The mode for grade 6 was i n the low 20's, for grade 7 i n the low 30*s, and for college students i t was i n excess of 45 out of a possible 63. The difference i n range of scores for the three grade l e v e l s should also be noted. While 17 percent of grade 6 students scored less than 20, no grade 7 students scored less than 20 and no college students had scores less than 25. At the other end of the scale, no grade 6 student had a score i n excess of 49 but t h i s was not the ease for the older two groups. In fa c t 23 percent of the college sample had scores i n excess of 55 out of a possible 63 p o i n t s . (2) Pendulum Task: Using the protocol scoring system described by Inhelder and Piaget (1958), the 20 c h i l d r e n were c l a s s i f i e d into the f o l -lowing f i v e categories: I - Pre-operational; IIA - E a r l y concrete operational; IIB - Consolidated concrete operational; IIIA - early formal operational; IIIB - Consolidated formal operational. None of the 20 children's performance was found to be t y p i c a l of either of the two extreme categories (I or I I I B ) . However, three c h i l d r e n were c l a s s i f i e d as early formal, 10 as l a t e concrete, and 7 as early concrete. As the primary purpose for conducting t h i s i n d i v i d u a l t e s t i n g was to examine the r e l a t i o n s h i p between v e r b a l l y stated p r o p o s i t i o n a l l o g i c problems ( i . e . Peel problems) and the more t r a d i t i o n a l method using the pendulum, the performance of each of these groups of c h i l d r e n on the Peel problems was of i n t e r e s t . Of the three c h i l d r e n c l a s s i f i e d as IIIA, the average score on the Peel problems 161. Figure 1C. Distribution of students (percent of sample within grade level) by total score on the Formal Operations Instrument. TOT AL SCORE FIGURE CI 163. was 10.67 out of 20. For the IIB and IIA groups r e s p e c t i v e l y , these means were 4.80 and 4.00 on the Peel problems. In a d d i t i o n , none of the 17 c h i l d r e n c l a s s i f i e d as concrete by the pendulum task scored i n excess of 10 out of 20 on the Peel problems while two of the three c h i l d r e n c l a s s i f i e d as formal operational did so. To allow for further examination of the r e l a t i o n s h i p between i n d i v i d u a l pendulum performance and scores on the group administered Formal Operations Instrument, percentages of c h i l d r e n within each pendulum c l a s s i f i c a t i o n who passed or f a i l e d a test item were c a l c u l a t e d . These data are sum-marized i n Table C3. With the exception of the weight conservation task (a concrete operational task), the majority of c h i l d r e n i n the two concrete operational categories (IIA and IIB) scored less than 50 percent on the test items, while the reverse was the case for those c l a s s i f i e d as formal ( I I I A ) . (3) The Chemicals Task: The f i n a l aspect of the p i l o t t e s t i n g was the i n d i v i d u a l administration of the Chemicals task to eight grade 6 s c h i l d r e n who were not part of the p i l o t sample of 23 grade 6 students r e f e r r e d to above, but who would receive the group administered version at a l a t e r date. Each unique combination of chemicals generated by the c h i l d received one point. The scoring of the responses to questions r e -garding determination of the influence of Chemicals 1 and 3 was i d e n t i c a l to that described i n Chapter 3 of t h i s report. In order to examine the consistency of performance across presentation method, contingency tables were set up for each of the following: number of combinations generated (maximum = 15), score on hypothesis t e s t i n g (Maximum = 8), and t o t a l Chemicals task score (maximum = 23). These data are presented i n Table C4. I t i s apparent that performance on the group administered version, Table C3 Relationship between performance on group administered FOI (percent of sample scoring more or less than 50% on an item) and i n d i v i d u a l l y administered pendulum task. Performance on FOI Score Less Than 50% Score Greater Than 50% Weight Volume Density Chem. Peel Weight Volume Density Chem. Peel ____________________————— i i i . i i f— IIIB ( 0 ) 3 ^ Pendulum Task IIIA (3) 00 00 33 00 33 100 100 66 100 66 Performance IIB (10) 50 80 60 60 100 50 20 40 40 00 (Piagetian IIA (7) 43 71 57 71 100 57 29 43 29 00 Stage) I (0) a. Number of c h i l d r e n . 165. Table C4 Comparison of performance on i n d i v i d u a l versus group administration of the Chemicals Task to eight s i x t h grade c h i l d r e n . GROUP ADMINISTRATION Combinations: 0-3 4-7 Hypothesis Testing: Individual Administration 0-3 4-7 8-11 12-15 0 2 4 6 8 8-11 12-15 Tot a l Score: 0-4 5-9 10-14 15-19 20-23 0-4 5-9 10-14 15-19 20-23 166. while not highly d i s s i m i l a r from i n d i v i d u a l administration, tended to be greater i n some students. For generation of combinations, four of the students achieved s i m i l a r scores i . e . they f e l l on the p r i n c i p a l diagonal. One students was only one i n t e r v a l higher on group administration, and three students moved up two i n t e r v a l s from i n d i v i d u a l to group t e s t i n g . For the hypothesis t e s t i n g segment of the task, scores across sessions tended to be more consistent. Five students f e l l within the p r i n c i p a l diagonal of the table while three students scored one i n t e r v a l higher on group t e s t i n g . In terms of t o t a l score, three students f e l l within the same score i n t e r v a l , four students moved up one i n t e r v a l , and one student moved up two scoring i n t e r v a l s . Conclusions from P i l o t T e s t i n g : From t h i s s e r i e s of p i l o t tests a number of conclusions were drawn regarding the Formal Operations Instrument. F i r s t , the procedure proved to be a workable one under group t e s t i n g s i t u a t i o n s for even the youngest subjects. Further no serious d i f f i c u l t i e s were encountered with equipment, response sheets, or timing. Second, the instrument was an e f f e c t i v e discriminator of performance of d i f f e r e n t grade l e v e l s , with older subjects c o n s i s t e n t l y out-performing younger c h i l d r e n (with the exception of the density conservation performance of seventh graders r e f e r r e d to above.). The d i s t r i b u t i o n of scores at the three age l e v e l s examined were also consistent with what might l o g i c a l l y be a n t i c i p a t e d regarding the development of competence i n formal operational thinking during adolescence. That i s , the majority of 11 and 12 year olds f a i l e d to demonstrate competence while the reverse was true for the major-i t y of 21 year olds. T h i r d , the s i g n i f i c a n t i n t e r c o r r e l a t i o n s among test items gives some 167. support, although recognizably l i m i t e d , to the contention that the items are measuring a singular construct. Further, the pattern of s i g n i f i c a n t c o r r e l a t i o n s between each item and the t o t a l score gives some i n d i c a t i o n of i n t e r n a l consistency, and suggests that the various items of thg scale are a l l measuring t h i s underlying competence. Fourth, the i n i t i a l concern over the degree to which the demonstration of competence i n p r o p o s i t i o n a l l o g i c may be adversly a f f e c t e d by the verbal format of the Peel problems as compared to the pendulum problem appears to have been minimized by the p i l o t t e s t r e s u l t s . C l e a r l y the majority of those who are c l a s s i f i e d as concrete on the pendulum problem also do poorly on the Peel problems as well as on the other items making up the assessment instrument. Conversely, those who are c l a s s i f i e d as formal according to performance on the pendulum test are also those who are most successful on the Peel problems and the other test items. Obviously the r e s u l t s from 20 students do not allow for a formal test of t h i s hypothesis of equivalence across methods, but they do serve to decrease concern over the appropriateness of the Peel problems for the purposes intended here. F i n a l l y , the r e s u l t s of the i n d i v i d u a l versus group administration of the chemicals task did suggest some need for concern over equivalence of task demands. I t was noted, however, that i t was on the number of com-binations generated that most improvement was found from i n d i v i d u a l to group t e s t i n g . Only minor increases were found i n the hypothesis t e s t i n g aspect of the task. I t should also be noted that i t was possible to vary the nature of the hypothesis t e s t i n g segment of the task by changing the numerical lables associated with the various chemicals. The 15 p o s s i b l e combinations that could be generated from four chemicals remained the 168. same from session to session, however. It seems reasonable to suggest then, that the increase in combinations generated from the individual to the group session was more likely due to a practice effect than to differences in testing mode. It is further proposed that the paper and pencil format of the group test was a more accurate assessment of competence in a b i l i t y to generate combinations than was the individual testing situation with the additional distraction and confusion posed by the manipulationsof test tubes, jars, beakers, racks, droppers, and liquids. On the basis of the foregoing, i t was concluded that the paper and pencil group test was an acceptable device for assessment of Piagetian formal operational thinking as intended in this research. 169. Appendix D Audio Protocol for Presentation of Paired Associates 170. Audio Protocol for Presentation of Paired Associates This i s your f i r s t study t r i a l . You w i l l see and hear 16 p a i r s of words. Pay close a t t e n t i o n t t o each p a i r so that you w i l l be able to rem-emger which words go together when you have your f i r s t t e s t . When the f i r s t study t r i a l i s f i n i s h e d then you w i l l have the f i r s t t e s t . Then you w i l l have a second study t r i a l and t e s t , and f i n a l l y a t h i r d study t r i a l and t e s t . Each time the p a i r s of words w i l l be i n a d i f f e r e n t order i n the l i s t , so don't t r y to remember which pa i r s come early and which p a i r s come l a t e r i n the l i s t . Just concentrate on t r y i n g to learn which words go together to make each p a i r . We w i l l begin the f i r s t study t r i a l now. a b i l i t y t r u t h (10 second rate of presentation) hammer d o l l f i r e apple love dream star fork f a u l t opinion tree baby science death pride fate flower house i r o n f l a g law fun pipe b a r r e l method shame ship b i r d d e v i l time We have completed the f i r s t study t r i a l . L i s t e n c a r e f u l l y . You w i l l be given the f i r s t word of each p a i r . a As soon as the word i s given t r y to say the other word that went with i t i n the p a i r . Say your answer c l e a r l y so that i t can be heard d i s t i n c t l y . I f you are not sure of an answer don't be a f r a i d to take a guess. Frequently your guesses are cor-r e c t . You w i l l have, f i v e seconds to give your answer. We w i l l begin now. science (5 second presentation rate) ship pipe method hammer a b i l i t y f i r e law 171. tree f a u l t i r o n d e v i l love flower star pride This i s the end of the f i r s t t e s t . Your second study t r i a l w i l l begin i n a few moments. (Pause to change s l i d e tray) This i s your second study t r i a l . Remember, concentrate•on t r y i n g to learn which words go together to make each p a i r . We w i l l begin now. love dream (10 second presentation rate) f a u l t opinion pipe b a r r e l flower house method shame f i r e apple faw fun star fork science death i r o n f l a g pride fate ship b i r d d e v i l time a b i l i t y t r u t h hammer d o l l tree baby This i s the end of the second study t r i a l . We w i l l begin your second t e s t . Remember to say your answers out loud and don't be a f r a i d to take a guess. We w i l l begin now. law (5 second presentation rate) f i r e i r o n pride tree d e v i l hammer a b i l i t y ship method love star flower science pipe f a u l t 172. This i s the end of the second t e s t . Your t h i r d study t r i a l w i l l begin a few moments. (Pause to change s l i d e tray) This i s your t h i r d study t r i a l . We w i l l begin now. f i r e apple (10 second presentation r a t e ) pride fate law fun ir o n f l a g tree baby pipe b a r r e l d e v i l time a b i l i t y t r u t h love dream hammer d o l l flower house f a u l t opinion star fork science death ship b i r d method shame Thid i s the end of the t h i r d study t r i a l . We w i l l begin your t h i r d and l a s t t e s t now. Remember to say your answers out loud i n a cl e a r voice and don't be a f r a i d to take a guess. love (5 second presentation rate) tree a b i l i t y pipe flower star method science law i r o n f u a l t ship hammer d e v i l f i r e pride This i s the end of the t h i r d t e s t . 173. Appendix E Table E l . F-Ratios for Treatment Comparisons Within Grades With Two Covariates Removed Table E2a. F-Ratios f o r Grade Trends Within Treatment Conditions. Table E2b. F-Ratios for Grade Trends Within Treatment Conditions With Two Covariates Removed Table E3. Mean R e c a l l by Grade, Treatment, Sex, T r i a l s and Item Type Table E l F-Ratios for Treatment Comparisons Within Grades With Two Covariates Removed. Univariate F's (d.f. = 1, U8) Concrete Noun Pairs Abstract Noun Pairs Within T1-T23 T2-T3 m m x T1-T23 m x T2-T3 Within T1-T23 T2-T3 m m x T1-T23 m x T2-T3 Grade 6 MR - MT 29.47** 2.43 4.07* < 1 < 1 2.19 2.29 * 1 •e. 1 *1 <1 <1 MC - MT 15.24** 6.38** 5.09* 1.22 *1 1.83 6.24** * 1 7.26** 4.85* 2.17 <-l h-1 ~ j Grade 8 MR - MT <• 1 * 1 <1 2.33 6.46* <1 1.31 -1 2.68 <1 2.89