A SEMANTIC CONGRUITY EFFECT IN CHILDRENS ACQUISITION OF HIGH AND LOW

The Semantic Congruity Effect (SCE) is the finding that children and a dults asked to compare pairs of objects drawn from a series perform be tter when the direction of comparison coincides with the location of t he objects in the series. Experiment 1 confirmed that this effect is d ue to an understanding of the dimension words involved and not to gene ral perceptual strategies by varying the words used to ask about the s ame stimuli (i.e.: higher/lower vs over/under). Experiment 2 examined children's understanding of higher/lower and found that the SCE could be reduced or enhanced by altering the stimulus context. Theoretical e xplanations are discussed, (C) 1998 Academic Press.