The strategy of negation and the learning of antonymic relations.

Hypothesized that the antonym response, common in children's word associations after the age of 6 yrs, may be explained as a derivative phenomenon that appears subsequent to the emergence of a strategy of negation. It is argued that negation leads to the operation of opposition, which precedes the relating of the antonym units. 80 4-6 yr olds were tested with 15 antonym pairs from J. Deese's (1965) list of adjectives that elicit one another as primaries. 40 Ss were presented the "unmarked" member of the antonym pair as the stimulus word and 40 the "marked" member. There was evidence for the emergence of a negation strategy prior to the statistically significant increase in antonym responding. No difference was found in the production of antonyms under the conditions of stimulus presentation. Data support the hypothesis that the marked member of the antonym pair is not learned by the young child as a derivative of the unmarked member, but is abstracted independently from learned contexts prior to its relating with the other member in the pair. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)