Children's learning and transfer of inductive reasoning rules: studies of proximal development

An initial study examined the relation between current developmental levels, as estimated by IQ, and proximal levels of development, as estimated by the efficiency of learning and transfer in assisted contexts. 8-11-year-old children learned to solve letter series completion problems with the aid of graduated sequences of prompts. Maintenance and transfer were later assessed using similar prompting procedures. Both IQ and age effects were found. Average-IQ (and younger) children required more assistance than high-IQ (and older) children to achieve the same mastery level on the original problem types. In addition to this difference in learning efficiency, average-versus high-IQ students, and younger versus older children, subsequently diverged in the number of prompts they needed as the transfer problems differed increasingly from the ones originally learned. In a second study, amount of assistance required in learning was found to be quite stable across moderately related tasks (letter series and progressive matrices). Assistance needed in maintenance and transfer appeared less stable but was also significantly correlated across tasks. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.