Effects of Advance Organizer Lessons on Children’s Use and Understanding of the Causal and Logical ‘Because’

This investigation tested Ausubel’s subsumption theory of learning in the context of children’s use of causal and logical connectives. It was predicted that the acquisition of prior cognitive structure organizers would (a) facilitate the learning and retention of subsequently presented concepts and logical operations, and (b) lead to a diminution of syncretic reasoning and understanding (as described by Piaget). Advance organizer lessons, representing both subject-matter concepts and concepts of hierarchical classification, were presented to six-and ten-year-old experimental group subjects in two sequentially related experiments on the use of the causal and logical ‘because.’ These were contrasted with introductory lessons, which presented learning materials at the same level of generality as subsequent information to control group children. A twice repeated pretest-posttest assessment indicated both an acceleration and facilitation effect from the advance organizer lessons. Also, sequential transfer occu...