Transfer effects in children's oddity learning.

Abstract

To assess the relative roles of positive and negative cue retention on oddity transfer, and the extent to which these roles change with age and practice, 144 3-7-year-old children learned six oddity-discrimination problems followed by either a random reversal or a minimally interferent oddity test. Performance on the oddity-discrimination problems indicated reliance on negative cues for the younger subjects and stronger positive cue retention for the older subjects, in the first task. By the end of training, negative cue effects appeared dominant. Transfer to tasks that were two or more steps removed from the original occurred only for 3-year-olds; interproblem improvement occurred only in the 4Vi-7-year subjects. Performance on the two oddity test procedures supported previous findings that reversal components in the oddity problem are disruptive. This effect was confined to the younger (S-SVi) children.