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Dissertation Information for Mariam Jean Dreher

NAME:
- Mariam Jean Dreher

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Educational Psychology

SCHOOL:
- University of California, Riverside (USA) (1980)

ADVISORS:
- None

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- None

MPACT Status: Incomplete - Not_Inspected

Title: THE INSTANTIATION OF GENERAL TERMS IN CHILDREN

Abstract: "The purpose of this dissertation was to conduct two studies to determine whether the instantiation hypothesis, which has been validated on college students, can be generalized to children. The instantiation hypothesis explains that as individuals read, they use the context of a sentence to generate particular terms for the more general terms in a sentence. The particular terms, called instantiations, are then stored in memory and used to represent the meanings of general terms. The instantiation hypothesis is derived from schema theory which holds that knowledge is incorporated into abstract, generalized structures which contain ""slots"" for filling in specific instances or instantiations.

The first study tested the hypothesis that, when directed to do so, intermediate-grade children can instantiate or generate contextually appropriate instances for general terms in sentences. This hypothesis was confirmed with 24 fifth-graders and 26 eighth-graders. Thus, the study indicated that children had the necessary schemata within their storage systems to instantiate the general terms in these sentences, and therefore, these sentences were valid for use in the second study.

The second study used 33 fifth-graders, 32 sixth-graders, and 67 eighth-graders drawn from the same population as the students in the first study. The second study tested the hypothesis that children can spontaneously generate particular instances for representing in memory the general terms of sentences and can then use these particular instances in recall. The sentences that had been validated in the first study were then used for the second study. In this study, the children learned three types of sentences (general, control, particular) and received two types of recall cues (general, particular). If children instantiate spontaneously, then for general sentences such as ""The boy earned a merit badge,"" the particular cue, ""scout,"" should be more effective than the general cue, ""boy,"" because ""scout"" would be used to represent the meaning of ""boy"" in memory. The particular cues consisted of the expected instantiations of the subject nouns of the general sentences that had been determined from the results of the first study. For control sentences, such as ""The boy saw the officer's badge,"" the effectiveness of the two types of cues should be reversed because ""scout"" is not the expected instantiation of ""boy"" in the control sentence. If children do instantiate spontaneously, then when they are given a particular recall cue (""scout""), their performance on particular sentences, such as ""The scout earned a merit badge,"" should be the same as on general sentences such as ""The boy earned a merit badge.""

The results of two types of repeated measures analyses of variance and of Tukey HSD post hoc comparisons indicated that the children in this study did not instantiate spontaneously. For general sentences, the particular cues were not significantly different in effectiveness than the general cues, and performance on general sentences was significantly lower (p < .05) than on particular sentences given particular cues. There were no differences in performance among grade levels. The results were shown to be reliable by using a split-half replication design.

The research reported in this dissertation does not support the generalizability of the instantiation hypothesis to children. However, the two studies indicate that intermediate-grade students can store and use the instantiation of a general term when it is provided for them. In addition, these students can instantiate when asked to do so. Consequently, this evidence supports the interpretation that fifth-, sixth-, and eighth-graders are developing toward an adult pattern of instantiation. The results of this dissertation have implications for developmental theories of memory and reading."

MPACT Scores for Mariam Jean Dreher

A = 0
C = 1
A+C = 1
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-01-31 06:18:20

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