Children’s Oddity Learning as a Function of Instruction and Task

Kindergarten children (mean age of 5:8) were given a standard task with color or form dimension and a dimension-abstracted (DA) task with color and form dimensions under one of the instructions which made the subjects attend to the relevant dimension, to the oddity relation, and to the relevant dimension and the oddity relation.The standard oddity learning was facilitated by the relation and the dimension-relation instructions but not by the dimension instruction.The DA oddity learning was facilitated by the three instructions and the dimension-relation instruction was the most effective.These findings suggest that for the standard task the relational component exists but the dimensional one does not in the learning process while for the DA task both the dimensional and the relational components exist in the learning process.