Construction and Validation of an Instrument to Evaluate Types of Thinking Through Proverb Interpretation
Keywords:
Proverbs test, Cognitive development, Concrete and abstract thinkingAbstract
An instrumentto evaluate concrete and abstract types of thinking was constructed and validated. The conducted as follows. 1) Selection of 104 proverbs commonly used in Brazil. 2) Evaluation of the familiarity and intelligibility
of the proverbs'words by a group of children. Proverbs not easily understood were excluded. 3) Evaluation of the proverbs'
familiarity by ten adult judges. 4) Content validity of the instrument - three options of answer were defined for each proverb:
concrete, abstract and irrelevant. Five judges evaluated these options as indicative of concrete or abstract thinking, or as not
being related to the meaning of the proverbs. Only those alternatives with a high degree of agreement among the judges were
accepted. 5) Analysis of the discriminam power and reliability - the instrument was administered to 195 children and teenagers
between 8 and 15 years old. The statistical analysis revealed an instrument with high discriminant power and reliability.
Downloads
References
Pedagógica e Universitária.
Boesky, D. (1976). Proverbs and psychoanalysis. The Psychoanalytic
Quarterly, 65, 539-564.
Elmore, CM. & Gohram, D.R. (1957). Measuring the impairment
of the abstracting function with the Proverbs Test. Journal of
Clinicai Psychology, 13, 263-266.
Fogel, M.L. (1965). The Proverbs Test in the appraisal of cerebral
disease. The Journal of General Psychology, 72, 269-275.
Gohram, D.R. (1956a). Proverbs Test - Best Answerform. Psychological
Test Specialists.
Gohram, D.R. (1956b). Use of the Proverbs Test for differentiating
schizofrenics from normais. Journal of Consulting Psychology,
20(6), 435-40.
Holanda, A.B. (1975). Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa. Rio de
Janeiro: Nova Fronteira.
Kemper, S. (1981). Comprehension and the interpretation of proverbs.
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 10, 179-198.
Kim, P.S., Siomopoulos, G. & Cohen, R.J. (1977). Verbal abstraction
and culture: an exploratory study with proverbs. Psychological
Reports, 41, 967-972.
Levin, J. (1987). Estatística aplicada a ciências humanas. São
Paulo: Harbra Editora.
Lomônaco, J.F.B., Faria, A.R., Martins Neto, H., Amêndola, M.B.
& Martins, R.H.S.C. (1981). A interpretação de provérbios em
função do sexo e da idade. Psicologia: Ciência e Profissão, 2,
69-86.
Martin, W.T. (1967). Analysis of the abstracting function in reasoning
using an experimental test. Psychological Reports, 21,
593-598.
Mota, L. (1973). Adagiário brasileiro. Fortaleza: Editora da Universidade
Federal do Ceará.
Page, M.H. & Washington, N.D. (1987). Family proverbs and value
transmission of single black mothers. The Journal of Social
Psychology, 127, 48-58.
Piaget, J. (1961). A linguagem e o pensamento da criança. Rio de
Janeiro: Editora Fundo de Cultura.
Siegel, S. (1975). Estatística não-paramétrica para as ciências do
comportamento. São Paulo: Editora McGraw-Hill do Brasil.
