Organization, Observation, and Guided Practice in Concept Attainment and Generalization

ROSENTHAL, TED L., and ZIMMERMAN, BARRY J. Organization, Observation, and Guided Practice in Concept Attainment and Generalization. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1973, 44, 606-613. Degree of organization in presenting stimuli, and training through modeling versus guided practice, were studied on a dial-reading concept using 144 children in third or fifth grade. Full stimulus organization created substantially stronger acquisition but no better transfer; all organization levels performed comparably in generalization, indicating that, under certain conditions, maximally organized intratask formats may not produce optimal intertask transfer. Vicarious training produced comparable learning among both grades and accounted for over twice as much dependent-measure variance as did direct guided practice, which interacted with grade level. Sex of child did not influence the results.