INTERSENSORY TRANSFER OF TRAINING IN YOUNG CHILDREN.

Abstract

Despite recent beginnings of experimental work on intersensory learning in children (Birch & Lefford, 1963; Blank & Bridger, 1964). the nature and conditions of such learning remain obscure. An experiment was designed to determine whether pretraining in a visual discrimination task would facilitate learning of an analogous auditory task. A group of 15 preschool children (6 boys, 9 girls), ages 3-3 to 5-1, were trained to respond to a two-light visual stimulus sequence by pushing a butcon corresponding to the color (red or blue) of the initial light. Subsequently they were taught to push the red button in response to a 1000-cps tone, and the blue button in response to the sound of a single door-chime. They were tested on a final task, an auditory analog of the visual prerraining: two-sound auditory sequence, tone and chime in randomly alternating order, with 4 blocks of 20 trials each. The red button was positive when the tone was the initial sound; the blue button was positive when the chime was the initial sound. A similar group of 22 ( 11 boys, 11 girls) children were given equivalenr experience in the room and were trained to respond to a single light by pushing the button of corresponding color. They also were trained to push the red button in response to the cone and the blue button in response to the chime. They were tested on the same final auditory task. Differences in the two groups on the final task were highly significant (F = 75.48, df = 2/35, p < .001), favoring the group with visual sequence training, indicating significant cross-modal transfer effects. However, when a third group of children were trained to respond positively to the linal light in a two-light sequence, they did nor show evidence of transfer to the auditory task. Thus it appears that intersensory transfer of a learned principle can be demonstrated easily in young children, but char the conditions leading to such transfer are not yet well-formulated. Considerably more research on the developmental aspects of intersensory behavior is needed.