Cognitive process development as measured by an adapted version of Wechsler's Similarities test

This paper studies the development of taxonomic processing as measured by an adapted version of the Wechsler Similarities subtest, which distinguishes between categorization of concrete and abstract words. Two factors — age and concreteness — are also tested by a recall task. The results show an age-related increase in taxonomic categorization, especially for abstract words; this change is more pronounced for the categorization task than for the recall task. The concreteness effect is also shown to be greater for categorization. A weak correlation between the recall of concrete and abstract words suggests that different processes are linked to dual coding of concrete words. However, the strong correlation between the categorization of concrete and abstract words testifies to a general factor in this task. Finally, age- and concreteness-related effects increase as the task gains in complexity. In conclusion, we discuss the role of immediate memory in cognitive functioning.