Developmental Study of Transposition in Young Children

Abstract

Six groups of nursery schoolers, kindergarteners, and first graders balanced for sex were trained and tested on a series of discrimination learning and transposition problems. Problems differed on some aspect of size, i.e., area, height, volume. Each child was trained to a criterion of learning and tested for transposition on a far- then near-test sequence for a fixed number of trials. Analyses of discrimination learning errors showed (a) an over-all decrease in errors with increasing age and increasing stimulus discriminability and (b) a decrease in mean error rates across problems. Analyses of transposition errors showed: (a) an over-all age trend of nursery schoolers more than kindergarteners and first graders; (b) over-all sex difference of females more than males; (c) more errors on far-test than near-test occurred only for area on the first problem; and (d) a progressive decrease in errors across problems. It was concluded that the primary developmental factor constraining transposition was the younger child's initially slower differentiation of the critical features of the stimulus in the acquisition of a set to transpose.