Integrating verbal quantitative information in linear orderings

Abstract

Subjects learned and answered questions about four-term linear orderings described in paragraphs of text. Spacing along the dimension employed was varied by using verbal quantifiers ("just barely," "moderately," and "very much"). After learning the quantitative information, performance on ordinal information varied as a function of the quantitative difference between terms in the ordering. Reaction time was faster for large quantitative differences than for small quantitative differences. This result indicates that vague verbal quantitative information is integrated into the memory representation for an ordering and that such quantitative information does affect test performance.