The Hierarchical Ordering of Preference for Relations in Solving Verbal Analogy Items. Technical Report No. 8 / Eileen Q. Monson and Rene V. Dawis.

Verbal analogy items, consisting of an ambiguous stimulus word pair and two unambiguous response word pairs as choice alternatives, were presented to psychology students in a counterbalanced design to discover if preferences existed between the two competing relations in each item. The data were analyzed to see if these preferences ordered themselves into a hierarchy. With only half of a full paired-comparisons matrix available for study, the data suggest that a hierarchical ordering of preferences for relations exists, with the cause-effect relation educed most readily and the order-time relation least readily. The results also suggest a need for developmental research into the origins of these preferences and investigation of the role of both individual differences and cultural differences. (Author/LL)

Microfiche. [Washington D.C.]: ERIC Clearinghouse microfiches : positive.