THE EFFECTS OF VERBAL JUSTIFICATION OF ANSWERS, AND A NONVERBAL ATTENTION FOCUSSING TECHNIQUE ON RAVEN COLOURED PROGRESSIVE MATRICES PERFORMANCE IN MILDLY LANGUAGE DISORDERED AND NORMAL CHILDREN.
Item
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Title
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THE EFFECTS OF VERBAL JUSTIFICATION OF ANSWERS, AND A NONVERBAL ATTENTION FOCUSSING TECHNIQUE ON RAVEN COLOURED PROGRESSIVE MATRICES PERFORMANCE IN MILDLY LANGUAGE DISORDERED AND NORMAL CHILDREN.
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Identifier
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AAI8103953
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identifier
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8103953
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Creator
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PASS, RAYMOND.
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Contributor
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Steven Mattis
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Date
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1980
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Experimental
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Abstract
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There are two main research areas which provide background for the present study. The Raven Progressive Matrices tests have come to be widely used in diagnostic clinical neuropsychological examinations as a measure of visual-spatial perception. They have also been frequently used in research applications with various clinical and normal populations. There have been statements in the literature implicating a verbal as well as a visual-spatial perceptual loading on the tests in terms of internal verbal mediation useful (some say necessary) in the solution of the matrix problems. It has been demonstrated that adult aphasic patients perform worse on the tests than non-aphasic left brain damaged patients. Another area of research germane to the present study is that of developmental patterns of verbal mediation, and mediational deficits in children. Two competing models are the "mediational deficiency hypothesis" which states that there is a period in human cognitive development in which verbal mediation does not aid problem solving, whether spontaneously supplied or artificially stimulated, and the "production deficiency hypothesis" which states that young children don't use verbal mediation because they don't produce it (but can make use of it if shown how to produce it). The present study used mildly language disordered, and normal, children to study both the nature of the language disorder in terms of a "competence/performance" dichotomy, and also the role of verbal mediation in solving the Coloured Progressive Matrices (CPM). Two groups of children (language disordered = ld, control; n = 60/group), controlled for nonverbal visual-spatial ability, were administered the CPM twice. The first administration was per standard instructions for all children. For the second administration, each group was split into three subgroups. One subgroup received a second standard CPM ("standard"); one subgroup was asked to verbally justify their answers for each item ("verbal"); one subgroup had its attention to each problem focussed by a passive nonverbal method. Results were as follows: (a) The ld children scored significantly lower than the control children on Raven1. (b) Within the ld group, those in the "verbal" condition scored significantly greater RDELTA scores (Raven2 - Raven1) than those in either the "standard" or the "focus" conditions, who in turn did not score differently from each other. (c) Within the control group, those in the "standard" condition scored significantly lower than those in either the "verbal" or the "focus" conditions, who in turn did not score differently from each other. (d) There were no differences in RDELTA scores between groups in the "standard" or "verbal" condition, however the control group scored significantly greater than the ld group in the "focus" condition. Interpretation of these results, and also of the scatter among the three scales of the test (A, Ab, B) yields the following conclusions: (a) There is a verbal component to the CPM. (b) The deficit in mildly language disordered children such as those in the present study is multifactored; there is a "performance" as well as a "competence" component. Language mediated performance can be increased by external stimulation, but there is a limit as to the level of possible improvement in performance. (c) There is an additional component to the deficit present in these children besides the observed language disorder. The ld children were matched to the control on Block Design and Object Assembly (active tasks), but scored significantly lower on the CPM. In addition, they could not make use of a passive nonverbal attention focussing technique, but increased performance when they had to actively deliver verbal justifications for answers. This suggests a deficit in ongoing internal cognitive organization, which is also of a "performance" nature".
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Psychology
