THE ORGANIZATION OF MENTAL VERBS AND FOLK THEORIES OF KNOWING

Folk theories of knowing in North American adults were studied by exam ining the organization of mental verbs in two tasks: (a) a Similarity Judgment Task in which subjects rated the similarity of verb pairs in terms of the way the mind is used, and (b) a Verb Extension Task in wh ich subjects identified the mental verbs applicable to a variety of sc enarios requiring specific mental activities. Organizational structure was assessed using multidimensional scaling and additive similarity t ree analyses. An Attribute Rating Task was used to describe the charac teristics which organized the various dimensions and clusters obtained in the scaling solutions. The folk theory of mind displayed was a nai ve information processing model with interactive and constructive comp onents. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.