ABSTRACT
The authors' studies in the children's institution began with the intention of emphasizing the determinants of Verbal Accessibility (VA) that derive from the social context. VA might be regarded both as a variable reflecting forces in the social situation and as a meaningful attribute of personality or character. To regard VA as a stable and "significant" attribute required demonstrating a number of things: Stability in time; Stability in varying social situations or contexts; Predictability, on the basis of other knowledge about the personality; Fruitfulness for making forecasts, in turn, about the person. The main evidence for such temporal stability comes from the study by Rickers-Ovsiankina and Kusmin. Mothers with higher VA had more intelligent children, a relationship again significant at beyond the one per cent level of confidence. Variations in VA with cultural background may be treated as an extension of the study of personality characteristics.
