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Prototype And Distinctive Feature Processing In Young Children As Related To Nonsense Words, Janice Faye Wallace

Graduate Theses

Human learning processes have long been topics of interest and research. Two processes, prototype and distinctive feature, were investigated in 20 kindergarteners in two groups of 10 each. I hypothesized that the prototype processing group would perform better than the distinctive feature group because of the age and probable cognitive development of the children. Group El was given instructions and trained to form prototypes of verbally presented nonsense words for classification. Group Eli was directed and trained to determine distinctive feature rules of the same nonsense words for classification. A transfer design was used to test learning. El reflected prototype …