GENERALIZATION EFFECTS FROM INSTRUCTION OF KINDERGARTNERS ON CLASSIFICATION AND SERIATION

Summary.-Kindergartners who were lagging behind their classmates in cognitive development were given either of two forms of instruction during the fall semester. One group was instructed in classification and seriation; the other was trained in letters, numbers, shapes, colors, arts, science, and arithmetic. Delayed posttest scores showed that the first group generalized significantly better than the second on classification problems but not necessarily on seriation problems when test problems were substantially different from training problems. Some studies have indicated that cognitive development of kindergarten children can be accelerated by giving them remedial instruction in classification and seriation. In ~articular, kindergartners who received such instruction have shown improvement in general reasoning (2) and in mathematical and verbal comprehension (3). Although these studies have shown that instruction in classification and seriation leads to general cognitive gains, there were no measurements of how broadly the children could generalize from the instruction or whether the generalization was enduring. The present study was designed to find out how well children could generalize classification and seriation principles in the same academic year in which they had been instructed. Accordingly, the trained children were taught classification and seriation in the fall semester and were tested for generalization in the spring semester. Their posttest scores were compared with those of an "active" control group who received as many lessons from the researcher as the former children but on topics suggested by their teachers, not on classification and seriation. This equalized familiarity, attention, and related factors, but the control children's mastery of dassification and seriation by the spring would depend only on maturation and incidental learning rather than instruction by the researcher. Any difference in the posttest performance of the two groups on the generalization tests would reflect a last~ng result of the experimental instruction. Metbod.-The teachers of the five kinderg:irten classes selected 22 pupils who were lagging behind their peers. The experimenters then screened the children on classification of objects by size, form, or orientation (two problems each) and on seriation of objects (four problems) to validate the teachers' judgments. The children were so heterogeneous that random assignment was unlikely to produce equality for this small sample. Hence, the experimenters formed two groups, balanced as to kindergarten class and classification ability, and randomly assigned one group to experimental and the other to control instruction. At the time of posttesting, eight children, mean age 6.2 yr. (SD = .5), remained in the experimental group. Half were boys and half minorities; they averaged 1.5 on the classification pretest (SD = 1.4) and .75 on the seriation pretest. Seven control children remained, mean age 5.9 yr. (SD= .6). Five were boys and three were minorities. Essentially, learning-set procedures were used to teach the experimental children to solve 80 oddity problems and 50 seriation problems involving hundreds of everyday objects ranging from beads and buttons to stones and washers, as described elsewhere (3). Control children were taught primarily letters, numbers, and counting via flashcards and various bingo games.