The acquisition of word meanings as a cognitive learning process

In Experiment 1 subjects who were relatively high or low in verbal comprehension learned the meaning of neologisms from series of sentences while thinking aloud. Differences between high- and low-verbal subjects were found in the way they use a known word meaning as a model for the neologism's meaning and in the way they transform the sentence contents accordingly. In Experiment 2 these findings were replicated and a corresponding difference in learning products was found. The “analytic” way in which high verbals use a model unit provides them with directions into which to transform the sentence contents, whereas the “holistic” model utilization of low verbals does not. Implications of these results for verbal comprehension from a psychological point of view are discussed.