Developmental psychology.pdf

278 Learning and Information Processing
Figure 10.14
Teaching for Transfer. Depending
upon how the concepts are taught,
mathematics can be extremely useful
to children in balancing a checkbook,
planning a trip, preparing a budget,
and determining the cost of paying in
installments.
physics to sewing, no significant advantage was found for studying any particular
subject. Mental functions seemed to be developed through the classics and mathematics
only because the most capable students commonly enrolled in these subjects, and there
is an inherent tendency for a capable student to gain more than a less capable student
from any course of study (Thorndike, 1924).
The public then began to favor a more practical high-school curriculum. Since
no specific course of study was highly advantageous in achieving mental development,
the student should be prepared for the "real world." Changes were made to include
more social studies and greater understanding of world problems, and many of these
curriculum developments are still in existence.
The study of Latin serves primarily to increase one's understanding of Latin.
For a larger Spanish vocabulary, Spanish should be studied, not Latin. But Latin can
be learned in various ways. There will be some transfer to Spanish vocabulary if Latin
word roots are stressed; there will be some transfer to Spanish verb forms if conjugations
are emphasized; and there will be some transfer to Spanish history if the cultural
background is stressed. Transfer does not occur automatically; it is significantly
influenced by the way in which the original task is learned (Figure 10.14).
Especially with retarded learners, considerable attention should be given to
transfer potential. One overall aim of special education is the development of skills
that will enable retarded people to profit from regular classroom instruction (Rose &
Gottlieb, 1981).
Forming Learning Sets The evidence for transfer comes from many phylogenetic
levels, and it is particularly impressive among monkeys. Confronted with a cup on the
right and a dish on the left, a monkey lifts the cup and finds nothing. On the next trial,
with the positions of the cup and dish perhaps interchanged, the monkey must consider
both the object and its position in making a guess. Each time the reward is under the
dish, and eventually the monkey solves the problem—always lifting the dish.
Next the monkey is presented with two entirely different objects, such as a
jar and a box. On the first trial it can only guess which one always contains the reward,
and the second trial is a test of learning. The monkey probably does not perform with
perfect accuracy right away, but it learns to solve this problem more rapidly than the
previous one. When presented with still another test, such as a large cube and a small