EFFECTS OF SPECIAL ATTENTION DIRECTED TO CHILDREN AS A DETERMINANT OFTHE EFFECTIVENESS OF COGNITIVE TRAINING-PROGRAMS

Various factors, such as inappropriate execution, may lead to evaluati ng a program as <<not effective>>, although it is effective. On the ot her hand, there are also some factors that can lead to evaluating a pr ogram as <<effective>>, although this is not the case. This article de als with the second possibility. It examines the importance of special attention directed to children during training for the <<Cognitive tr aining for children>> (Klauer & Phye 1994), which has been developed t o foster children's inductive reasoning ability. It is shown that a se cond program which tries to enhance short-term memory capabilities may lead to statistically significant improvements with diagnostic tests that are used to assess inductive reasoning in children. The improveme nts gained with the program for inductive reasoning, moreover, do nor differ significantly from those with the second program. These results shed a new light on the size of effects due to the <<Cognitive traini ng for children>> as such without, however, questioning its usefulness in practical circumstances.