A USE OF SELF-INSTRUCTION TO EXTEND THE GENERALIZATION OF A SELF-INSTRUCTED IN-COMMON DISCRIMINATION

Three typically developing preschool children were presented with an i n-common sorting problem involving colored and marked shapes; the task was to see what two pictures had in common and to sort a deck of pict ures according to that feature. The children failed to serf accurately . They were then taught to name the common features of any pair and to answer the question, ''What are you looking for7'' before sorting, to produce the form of a self-instruction (e.g., ''I'm looking for blue triangles''). They still failed to sort accurately until they were tau ght to link their sorting to that potentially self-instructive answer. They then showed perfect accuracy in sorting and occasional spontaneo us overt self-instructions, when told only ''Put here what these pictu res have in common,'' across ever-changing pairs (much like the childr en of prior reports). The present report asks whether that finally cor rect performance would generalize to new stimuli. Accordingly, the chi ldren were probed with steadily changing sample pairs of three new sti mulus sets--recombinations of the colored, marked shapes used in train ing. letters; and pictures. One child showed near-perfect generalizati on to all three of these new sets (like many children in prior reports ). But the other two children showed near-perfect generalization to on ly two of the sets and not to the third Set-letters. Merely reintroduc ing the content-free question, ''What are you looking for?'' and ackno wledging coned answers to it (i.e., self-instructions about letters) y ielded largely accurate sorting of letter problems; this way of remedi ating failures of generalization had nor been studied before. Ln gener al, sorting problems with two elements in common proved more difficult than those with one element in common; this difference diminished in the child told to self-instruct about letters after that self-instruct ion. (C) 1997 Academic Press.