Facilitating Class-Inclusion Skills in School-Age Children

Abstract

Summary This study examined the effects of training the class-inclusion reasoning of 160 children (20 boys and 20 girls from each of grades 1, 2, 4, and S) on previously examined and previously unexamined subordinate and superordinate classes. With the use of Sigel's questioning paradigm, the children were asked to describe and note similarities and/or differences between subordinate classes. On previously examined classes boys performed better than girls; older children performed better than younger children; and children exposed to descriptive, similarities, and difference questions performed better than children exposed to either descriptive and similarities or descriptive and difference questions. For unexamined classes, the young children transferred the partial variants of the questioning paradigm most effectively, whereas the older children were able to transfer the total paradigm strategy most effectively.