INTERACTION OF INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES WITH VISUAL AND VERBAL ELABORATION INSTRUCTIONS

Investigated (a) to what extent the typical effects of elaboration instructions and the imagery characteristics of verbal material would obtain for foreign-language/English word pairs and (b) to what extent individual differences would moderate these effects. To explore these issues, verbal fluency, visualization ability, and instructions were factorially varied between Ss, and the imagery characteristics of the response terms were varied within Ss. 48 university students were selected for participation in the experiment on the basis of their performance on psychometric tests. The result of most interest was the crossover interaction between verbal fluency and elaboration instructions. Results are discussed in terms of Aptitude × Treatment interactions and the importance of individual differences in decisions regarding instructional methods. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1978 American Psychological Association.