Effects of presentation and reinforcement on the recognition of a word list by kindergarten children

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dc.contributor.authorStrachan, Lillian Evelynen_US
dc.date.accessioned2024-08-15T18:26:02Z
dc.date.available2024-08-15T18:26:02Z
dc.date.copyright1973en_US
dc.date.issued1973
dc.degree.departmentFaculty of Education
dc.degree.departmentDepartment of Curriculum and Instruction
dc.degree.levelMaster of Arts M.A.en
dc.description.abstractA sample of 120 kindergarten children, 60 boys and 60 girls, was taken to a learning task of recognising four words of known meanings. One group of 40 children, 20 boys and 20 girls, was presented the list by printed stimuli alone. A second group of 40 children was presented the list by printed stimuli and coloured photographs represented by the words while a third group of 40 children was presented the list by printed stimuli and objects represented by the words. One-half of the students in each group, 10 boys and 10 girls, received verbal reinforcement for correct responses while the other half of each group received material reinforcement (pennies) for correct responses. Trials to mastery and retention scores were analysed. A three-way analysis of variance indicated no significant differences for either the main effects of method of presentation, sex, and type of reinforcement or for interaction effects of method of presentation, sex, and type of reinforcement. Independent t tests comparing means between individual cells, calculated with the purpose of finding trends which might be useful in future research, showed the following significant results. Girls' retention scores with material reinforcement indicated that both the word card and word-picture methods o f presentation were better than the word-object method of presentation. Girls' trials to mastery scores with material reinforcement also favoured the word-picture method over the word-object method. Girls' retention scores in the word-object cell indicated that verbal reinforcement was better than material reinforcement. Boys remembered more words than girls in the word-object experimental condition with material reinforcement. Two-way analysis of variance indicated no significant interaction effects between the combinations of the variables of types of reinforcement, methods of presentation, and sexes of children. Conclusions reached on the basis of this study indicate that kindergarten children do not appear to be influenced by associational cues such as pictures and objects when learning to recognise words. Both reinforceĀ­ments offered appeared to provide incentive to learn; neither reinforcement, however, appeared better than the other in facilitating the acquisition and retention of a list of words. Great variability between individual children was in evidence. Further investigation into more efficient methods of learning new words appears warranted.en
dc.format.extent140 pages
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1828/19809
dc.rightsAvailable to the World Wide Weben_US
dc.titleEffects of presentation and reinforcement on the recognition of a word list by kindergarten childrenen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

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