Convergence‐divergence and the learning of concrete and abstract sentences

School pupils (mean age 17 years) were classified as convergers or divergers on the basis of their performance on the AH5 Intelligence Test and the Uses of Objects test. They were presented with a set of concrete and abstract sentences, followed immediately by a forced‐choice recognition test. There was a significant interaction between abstractness‐concreteness and convergence‐divergence, in which the effect of the abstractness‐concreteness variable was highly significant for convergers, but was non‐significant for divergers. This interaction was attributed to the superior ability of divergers to discover those different interpretations of a single nominal stimulus held to be inherent in abstract, though not in concrete, sentences. In addition, some evidence against Paivio's (1971) dual‐coding model was presented

Coding (social sciences) · Cognitive psychology · Concreteness · Convergence (economics) · Divergence (linguistics) · Linguistics · Statistics · Educational and Psychological Assessments · Mathematics · Psychology