Learning and transfer of relevant strategy in children

Eighty kindergarten children were trained in an oddity problem where perceptual or conceptual attribute was to be a relevant cue, 30 trials being given each child. After the initial learning, subjects were randomly assigned to either intradimensional (ID) or extradimensional (ED) oddity shift. The performance in perceptual oddity learning was inferior to that in conceptual oddity learning. The ID shift score was higher than the ED one, but both scores were influenced by the nature of relevant stimulus attributes. As the proportion of oddity strategy in comparatively higher consistency skill increased with trials, other strategies proportionately decreased. Most of subjects demonstrated stimulus perseveration in the trial block just before using oddity strategy. From these results, it was suggested that subjects might select and test various problem-solving hypotheses before they were convinced of a relevant strategy.