Denial of true-false statements and verbal ability

M. Michael Akiyama, Richard Pollack, Michelle Kelley, Kathy Coggins
1985 Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society  
Sixteen high-verbal and 16 low-verbal university students were asked to deny ordinarily true statements (e.g., A ship is large), partially false statements (e.g., A dog is large), and utterly false statements (e.g., A fly is large). High-verbal students used affirmative statements 57% of the time to ordinarily true statements, 69% ofthe time to partially false statements, and 87% ofthe time to utterly false statements. Low-verbal students did not distinguish the three types of statements. The
more » ... ndings were discussed in terms of the role of verbal ability and stylistics in the English language.
doi:10.3758/bf03329766 fatcat:k2b4yfoqlzfntautjezdnadhk4