Training and Transfer of Transitivity, Conservation, and Class Inclusion of Length

BRAINERD, CHARLES J. Training and Transfer of Transitivity, Conservation, and Class Inclusion of Length. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1974, 45, 324-334. Separate groups of preschool children (4-5-year-olds) were trained to acquire transitivity, conservation, and class inclusion of length via verbal feedback that was contingent on their judgment responses. The principal findings were: feedback induced durable and minimally general improvements in all 3 skills; transitivity was easier to train than either conservation or class inclusion and conservation was easier to train than class inclusion; there was no evidence that training on any 1 of the skills tended to transfer to the other 2 skills; interconcept transfer of training (to weight) was observed for all 3 skills; interconcept transfer of training was more pronounced for transitivity and class inclusion than for conservation.