Scaling Meaningfulness (M) of Trigrams with Children and Retardates

Summary

The production method and paired-comparisons procedures were used to scale 25 trigrams for meaningfulness with children and retardates. Reliabilities of scale values derived from subgroup comparisons were moderate. Test-retest reliabilities were somewhat higher. Correlations of these scale values with values obtained from adults ranged from .60 to .75. Adult meaningfulness values predicted paired-associate learning success for both children and retardates better than did production and paired-comparison values. The results support the assumption that meaningfulness norms obtained from adults are, under some conditions, appropriate for use in learning experiments with children and retardates.