Verbal Mediation and Satiation in Young Children.

The study demonstrates: (1) the occurrence of verbal mediation with its facilitory effect, and (2) the interfering effect of verbal satiation on mediational processes in a three-state chaining paradigm. 40 preschool children were randomly assigned to either a control (no satiation) or an experimental (satiation) group. The subjects in the control group learned three lists of three stimulus response pairs. The stimuli consisted of eight cards, five of which were black outlined drawings of either a car, boat, tree, dog or cat, and three had either blue, yellow, or red squares. Two of the pairs were mediated, the third was non-mediated. The experimental group learned the first two lists, then prior to learning the third list, they repeated the B term continually for 30 seconds. A two by three analysis of variation performed on the number of errors to criterion on list three, revealed a significant interaction of the between groups factor (experimental or control) and the within stimulus factor. No other terms reached significance. (author/MC)