TRAINING IN MEASUREMENT

The study investigated the effects of Obuchova's (1966, 1972) method o f teaching children how to measure. The subjects were 30 kindergarten children who showed no pretest knowledge of either conservation or ser iation. Children from the training condition (n = 15) received 3 1/2 w eeks of training. Training appeared to be highly effective. A broad ne ar-far transfer was observed; that is, skills were transferred to cons ervation tasks not taught in training. Far-far transfer (i.e., transfe r to concepts not included in training) was also observed, because the children were able to solve a broad range of seriation tasks for whic h they had received no training. This is a noteworthy result, because far-far transfer has rarely been reported in training research. These effects persisted for 4 months. The educational importance of this res ult is that by means of a broadly designed course of training, strong and long-lasting near-far and far-far transfer effects may be induced. Training did not, however, evoke sleeper effects, because trained and untrained children performed at the same level 2 years after training .