Use and understanding of adverbial conjuncts: a developmental study of adolescents and young adults

The use and understanding of two types of adverbial conjuncts, concordant (e.g., similarly, moreover, consequently) and discordant (e.g., contrastively, rather, nevertheless), was examined developmentally in 120 adolescents and young adults. Four groups of 30 students participated. Mean ages of the groups were 12:9, 15:10, 19:2, and 23:8 (years:months). The results demonstrated an increasing ability to use and understand these words in the written mode. An interesting discrepancy emerged between the use and the understanding of adverbial conjuncts, a finding that resembled the well-documented discrepancy between the use and the understanding of spoken words in young children. Although young adults had mastered the words in terms of their understanding, they continued to show some difficulty using the words correctly. It was also found that the two types of conjuncts were equally difficult, a result that failed to support Piaget's (1928) hypothesis concerning the greater difficulty of discordant connectives. Factors that may contribute to the development of adverbial conjuncts are discussed.