Task orders and stages of development in conservation training
Date
1980
Authors
Norton, Janice Marie
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Abstract
The relationship between order of presentation of training tasks and stage of development on conservation concept acquisition was assessed. One hundred and twenty-six kindergarten and first grade children from 4 middle class schools participated in the conservation training study. The experiment was conducted in four phases: administration of a pretest, two training sessions approximately three days apart immediately followed by a posttest, and a delayed posttest two weeks later.
Children were assigned to one of 6 treatment conditions on the basis of their pretest score on 4 conservation tasks (length, number, mass substance, and liquid volume). Also included in the pretest were continuous length and class inclusion tasks.
The study attempted to 'standardize' the self-discovery method of training laid out by Inhelder, Sinclair and Bovet (1974) in their chapter on conservation of length. The training task consisted of presenting a child with one of 3 stimulus layouts which varied in difficulty. The child's task was to construct a straight pathway below the layout with match sticks that were sometimes smaller than those used to construct the standard.
Training conditions varied according to the order in which the three layouts were presented. In the 'Fade' condition items were presented in an easy-to-hard order. In the 'Loop' condition the same items were presented in a hard-to-easy-to-hard sequence. Items in the 'Change' condition were alternated in an easy-to-hard order i.e. easy, medium, easy, medium hard, hard. Two control groups were included to control for possible repeated testing effects. The 3-test control group received the pretest and immediate and delayed posttest at the same intervals as the trained subjects. The 2-test control group received the pretest and delayed posttest only.
Subjects trained with the Fade and Change orders were found to perform significantly better than the Loop or control group subjects on the immediate posttest criteria. This performance was maintained to the delayed posttest 2 weeks later and was hypothesized to be the result of far transfer. Loop trained and 3-test control subjects showed substantial improvement between the immediate and delayed posttests. It was proposed that this improvement was the result of near transfer in which the immediate posttest criteria and experimenter served as training.
While relatively the same percentage of non conserving and partially conserving children benefitted from Fade and Change training, only partial conservers in the Loop and Control group improved as a function of repeated exposure. If one looks at frequency (the per cent of subjects who improve) the present data indicate strong differences in favor of those children who are more advanced on the pretest, thus supporting the stage theory. However, analyses of the magnitude or mean incremental changes for non conservers and partial conservers reveals no differences. This indicates that those non conservers (however many) who improve, show just as much improvement as their more advanced peers.