A comparison of external and self-instructional formats with children of different ages and tasks of varying complexity

Abstract

The premise that both subject and task variables need to be considered in evaluating the relative efficacy of external and self-instructional procedures was examined. The performance of first-, second-, and third-grade children, trained through either an external or self-instructional format, was assessed on double classification discrimination tasks of differing difficulty. The results indicated that the two teaching formats were equally effective in facilitating accurate performance on the easy and medium-difficulty tasks for children of all three grade levels. Self-instruction, however, was found to be the more effective teaching procedure for first-grade children on the high-difficulty task at posttraining. Correlational analyses indicated that children who had higher receptive verbal ability scores on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test were better able to verbalize the trained strategy. Also, these analyses indicated that children who could verbalize the trained strategy performed more accurately and took longer in completing the assessment tasks. The implication of the results for conducting a more refined analysis of the relationship between individual difference variables and self-instructional training program efficacy is discussed.