Training in Measurement

Abstract

The study investigated the effects of Obuchova's (1966, 1972) method of teaching children how to measure. The subjects were 30 kindergarten children who showed no pretest knowledge of either conservation or seriation. Children from the training condition (n = 15) received 3 1/2 weeks of training. Training appeared to be highly effective. A broad near-far transfer was observed; that is, skills were transferred to conservation tasks not taught in training. Far-far transfer (i.e., transfer to concepts not included in training) was also observed, because the children were able to solve a broad range of seriation tasks for which they had received no training. This is a noteworthy result, because far-far transfer has rarely been reported in training research. These effects persisted for 4 months. The educational importance of this result is that by means of a broadly designed course of training, strong and long-lasting near-far and far-far transfer effects may be induced. Training did not, however, evoke sleeper effects, because trained and untrained children performed at the same level 2 years after training.