OPTIMAL MISMATCH FOR TRANSFER OF PLANNING SKILLS BY SLOW LEARNERS

Studies with mentally retarded children frequently report failure to t ransfer learned strategies. It is possible that, although the children can be guided to succeed on a training task, the failure to transfer is due to there being too great a mismatch between the task and their current unaided level of performance. This suggestion was tested by co mparing the transfer of a forward search planning strategy acquired by groups of retarded childen when the mismatch between training and cur rent competence was varied. In one comparison, two groups, matched on initial developmental level within the task domain, were trained on ei ther the next or the next-but-one step in a developmental sequence. In a second comparison, two groups were trained at the same level in the developmental sequence. For one group this represented the next avail able step in the sequence, and for the other group it was the next-but -one step. In each comparison, although the pairs of groups required t he same number of trials and hints to reach a learning criterion, only the group trained on the step adjacent to their current level of unai ded performance showed transfer.