Children's Learning and Transfer of Inductive Reasoning Rules: Studies of Proximal Development

Abstract

An initial study examined the relation between current developmental levels, as estimated by IQ, and proximal levels of development, as estimated by the efficiency of learning and transfer in assisted contexts. 8-11-year-old children learned to solve letter series completion problems with the aid of graduated sequences of prompts. Maintenance and transfer were later assessed using similar prompting procedures. Both IQ and age effects were found. Average-IQ (and younger) children required more assistance than high-IQ (and older) children to achieve the same mastery level on the original problem types. In addition to this difference in learning efficiency, average-versus high-IQ students, and younger versus older children, subsequently diverged in the number of prompts they needed as the transfer problems differed increasingly from the ones originally learned. In a second study, amount of assistance required in learning was found to be quite stable across moderately related tasks (letter series and progressive matrices). Assistance needed in maintenance and transfer appeared less stable but was also significantly correlated across tasks. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.

Memory Development Between 2 and 20

“…According to this perspective, children frrst experience sophisticated processing in interpersonal situations, with more mature thinkers (i.e., parents, teachers, other children) guiding their cognition, often providing hints as to how the children should proceed when they cannot manage on their own. One tenet of Vygotskian theory isthat an important individual difference dimension distinguishing more competent from Iess competent children is the amount of prompting that they require in order to manifest a new cognitive skill given the same starting competence, with data beginning to accurnulate in support of this hypothesis (e.g., Campione & Brown, 1984;Campione, Brown, Ferrara, Jones, & Steinberg, 1985;Day & Hall, 1987;Ferrara, Brown, & Campione, 1986).…”

Theoretical propositions of life-span developmental psychology: On the dynamics between growth and decline.

“…The focus has changed from demonstration of plasticity toward using research on plasticity as a strategy by which limits and boundaries of development can be identified (Kliegl & Baltes, 1987). This strategy is similar to child research on the "zone" of proximal development in childhood (Brown, 1982;Ferrara, Brown, & Campione, 1986).…”

Comparing memory skill maintenance across the life span: Preservation in adults, increase in children.

“…Error bars indicate standard errors of the mean. Ferrara, Brown, & Campione, 1986). Also, most studies investigated mnemonic strategies of relatively low complexity such as rote rehearsal (Kennedy & Miller, 1976) or simple categorization (Bjorklund, Schneider, Cassel, & Ashley, 1994;Schneider & Sodian, 1988), predominantly in younger children (e.g., preschoolers or first and second graders), without extensive training (e.g., Cox, 1994;Kurtz & Borkowski, 1984).…”