Less Is More: A Study of Language Comprehension in Children

Abstract

A task devised to study comprehension of the words ‘more’ and ‘less’ was given to a group of 15 children aged between 3:5 yr. and 4:1 yr. Another task, designed to assess comprehension of ‘less’ without reference to ‘more’, was given to the same group approximately 6 months later. The main finding (which holds for both occasions) is that only one subject gave consistently correct responses to ‘less’. For the others it seemed that ‘less’ remained largely undifferentiated from ‘more’. The children showed a marked tendency to make the same response, irrespective of which of the two words was used in the instruction. ‘More’ was dominant as the interpretation given to the undifferentiated pair.

The role of context in young children’s comprehension of negation

“…Furthermore, children as old as 4 years continue to have difficulty with implicitly negative terms such as marked adjectives (e.g. less; Donaldson & Balfour (1968), Klatzky, Clark, & Macken (1973)). Thus, although ''no'' is among the first words that children produce, they continue to grapple with the nuances of negation for several more years.…”

TASK ANALYSIS IN CURRICULUM DESIGN: A HIERARCHICALLY SEQUENCED INTRODUCTORY MATHEMATICS CURRICULUM1

“…The Uprichard and the Wang findings are in agreement concerning the dependency of the concept of "less than" on "more" and "equivalent". In addition, Donaldson and Balfour (1968) found that children at about age four typically respond to the term "less" as if it were synonymous with "more". Thus, for this concept, existing empirical data support the predictions derived from task analysis.…”

As variáveis número de experimentadores e tipo de contexto alterando o desempenho de crianças em tarefas de conservação: o problema da padronização do método clínico em testagens clássicas

“…Alguns trabalhos como os de Donaldson (1968Donaldson ( , 1982, Rose e Blank (1974), Perner (1984), destacaram a importância das variáveis lingüísticas que, ao serem operacionalizadas de maneira diferente da testagem clássica, mostravam alterações no desempenho das crianças em tarefas de conservação.…”

“…Experimentos como os de Donaldson (1968Donaldson ( , 1982 indicaram que o experimentador poderia, por intermédio da linguagem utilizada, involuntariamente, induzir as crianças submetidas às tarefas de conservação a produzirem respostas erradas. Foi cogitado que o fato de um adulto modificar um arranjo e perguntar uma segunda vez se as quantidades se alteraram, poderia ser suficiente para que a criança acreditasse que devesse dar uma resposta diferente para esta segunda pergunta.…”