THE EFFECT OF COMPLEXITY OF NATURAL LANGUAGE MEDIATORS AND THE ASSOCIABILITY OF PAIRS ON PAIRED-ASSOCIATE LEARNING,

Natural language mediators NLM are widely used by Ss in paired-associate learning. Experiments which have documented their effect on learning have, however, largely ignored qualitative differences between them. Two large groups each learned a different CVC-word list after which they reported any NLMs they had used. Judges rated the complexity of NLMs using a scale developed by Martin, Boersma and Cox 1965 with different materials. The results agree with theirs in that complex NLMs produced fewer errors in learning. However, some categories on the scale were used infrequently which may indicate that, at least with highly meaningful material, a simpler dichotomous categorization NLM or Rote may be preferable. Author