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While studies in learning and verbal behavior show that learning comes through paired-associate problems, they do not explain the acquisition of language. Three paradigms demonstrate mediation effect in paired-associate learning: response equivalence, stimulus equivalence, and chaining model. By reviewing children's language acquisition patterns in terms of the three paradigms, several conclusions were reached. A child utters words which are related to his experience. He establishes response and stimulus equivalence paradigms simultaneously. In a response equivalence situation, he learns one response can apply to several stimuli, and in a stimulus equivalence situation, one stimulus is paired with many responses. When learning complex utterances, the child chains equivalence paradigms. The same patterns are applied in learning plurals, tenses, and negatives. In an addendum, the author discusses the positions of a psychologist and a linguist in language acquisition. The psychologist ignores the complexities of the language, oversimplifies imitation, and disregards the relationship between memorizing and meaningful learning. The linguist assumes hierarchical learning but does not test it, and he rejects mediation learning theories. Although maintaining separate goals, the two schools should act jointly to stimulate needed further research in language acquisition. (JS)

Free-association norms for 200 words were obtained in 1964 from the responses of 500 subjects in each of grades four through eight, 10, and 12 and from 1,000 college students. An analysis of this normative data revealed that (1) the frequency of occurrence of the most popular associative responses to stimulus words increases with the age of the subject, (2) the number of different responses to a word decreases with the age of the subject, (3) the response words themselves undergo about a 50 percent change from the fourth grade to college, (4) contrast or opposite responses increase with age, and (5) paradigmatic responses also increase with the age of the subject. Thus, word-association characteristics vary importantly between children and adults. The influence of the associative strength of words on different verbal learning tasks has been investigated. Such an influence has been demonstrated for paired-associate learning, clustering in free recall, associative generalization, and mediated generalization. Normative word association data have also been collected for children in grades one through four. Analysis of these data shows the same trends as observed in the norms discussed for the larger population. (WD)