THE TRAINABILITY OF FORMAL THINKING: A CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON

In order to investigate what is learned in a training study on inductive reasoning, three tests were composed, involving two stimulus domains, namely letters and figures. Each test was composed on the basis of a set of explicitly defined item generating rules. The two figural tests were isomorphic tests, that is, they had identical problem structures but invoked different stimulus domains, simple geometric patterns and drawings of fruit. These tests were administered to pupils from grade 6 in The Netherlands, Surinam and Zambia. Half of each class was then trained at one of the three tests, while the other half did not get any training. During the training the pupils were taught to solve the items by trying to detect the features of the item generating rules. Four possible outcomes of transfer studies were postulated, differing in the generality of transfer of the results. By means of a Multivariate Analysis of Variance with Repeated Measures it was possible to differentiate between the four kinds of transfer; a pattern of fairly restricted transfer was demonstrated in each culture. Furthermore, in Zambia a remarkable score increase was found at the Letter Test, occurring both in the experimental and in the control condition. It was argued that this increase was caused by improved test-taking skills, learned at the first test administration.