Differences among Slopes and Intercepts for Regression Lines Predicting Children's Connotative and Denotative Knowledge of Familiar and Unfamiliar Words on the Basis of Age

Abstract

90 children from Grades 2, 4, and 6 were asked to define words and to rate them in terms of emotional meaning. Significant differences among criterion means and among slopes and intercepts of lines predicting definitional and emotional accuracy on the basis of age suggest that knowledge about the pleasantness of familiar words (pleasantness accuracy) begins early, is high, and asymptotes earlier in comparison to definitional knowledge or to the WISC—R Vocabulary subtest in which knowledge (accuracy) begins to grow at a later age, grows faster, and does not reach the same over-all mean.