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Biomedical subjects

M Chalmers

Publications and source records attributed to M Chalmers.

6 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1984

The selective impact of question form and input mode on the symbolic distance effect in children.

Five experiments are reported on the symbolic distance effect (SDE) and related phenomena with 6- and 9-year-old children. In the first of these, children were asked to judge the relative sizes of animals in verbal and pictorial tests featuring the comparatives "bigger" and "smaller." A perceptual condition with actual objects was included by way of comparison. A Symbolic Distance Effect was obtained for both lexical and pictorial input. Mode differences were also observed. Pictures produced faster responses than words, and congruity effects occurred only in the pictorial condition. Although performance was similar in tests with either comparative, our subsequent experiments on both 6- and 9-year-olds reveal a significant asymmetry in the child's capacity to verify statements of relation as a function of the direction along the (size) continuum implied by the question. However, important differences between age groups also apparent in the data lead us to conclude that the older subjects develop strategies to overcome this asymmetry by translating certain statements of relation into a form more congruent with their natural modes of encoding.

Child↗
PubMed1980

The selective impact of verbally communicated criteria in orientation judgements by young children.

In a series of tests requiring judgements of orientation, the impact of a verbally transmitted equivalence criterion (e.g. "Pick me out the one exactly the same as this one") was compared with one which specified the 'identity' of the target as a 'standing up' or 'lying down' pattern. When a subset of four-year-olds was given the latter instruction, their performance improved dramatically (although all stimuli were lying flat on a horizontal surface) but reverted to a previous (low) level when equivalence instructions were reintroduced. The results suggest that findings from equivalence tests cannot be used to make unambiguous inferences concerning the competence of young children to make identification judgements.

Child, Preschool↗