Four experiments (101 students, average age 11 years, 1 month) included instruction designed to increase performance on 16 variants of conditional reasoning syllogisms. A Logic Board consisting of two intersecting circles (Venn diagram), object-blocks, Label Cards above the circles, and a premise Rule Card were used for one of three groups in each experiment. All materials were designed to operationalize the meaning of antecedent and consequent terms of a syllogism (whether positively or negatively stated) and the resulting areas of inclusion, exclusion, and intersection. The first experiment compared performance of a rule group, which had the Rule Card displayed during each syllogism, and a discovery group which had to generate the rule on the basis of correctly placed blocks. The second experiment compared rule instruction with that of observational instruction in which children used the same materials, but moved no blocks and saw only correctly arranged Logic Board configurations. The third experiment compared the effectiveness of the Venn diagram format of the Logic Board with that of a Cartesian plane format. The fourth experiment compared performance following rule instruction with objects versus two-dimensional drawings of the Logic Board configurations. Non-instructed control subjects were included in each experiment. / Following instruction, instructed children in all experiments improved their average performance on short term, long term (two weeks), and transfer tests. More importantly, instructed groups' performance was consistently much more variable than was the performance of the non-instructed groups. Discovery instruction was generally more effective than rule instruction. Moving the blocks and making errors in arranging the Logic Board was not especially important, and the Cartesian plane format was not very effective in increasing performance. Two-dimensional drawings were as effective as the concrete, three-dimensional materials. Instruction substantially improved solutions on the two invalid conditional reasoning syllogisms which were the most difficult for all subjects prior to instruction and which remained difficult for the non-instructed subjects in each experiment. Instruction was less effective in aiding performance on the valid forms, with instructed students actually performing less well on the deny the consequent problems following instruction. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-11, Section: A, page: 4654. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1980.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74353 |
| Contributors | LANE, DAVID SEFFERS, JR., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 142 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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