Change in spontaneous analogical transfer in young children: A microgenetic study

This study assessed the development of spontaneous analogical transfer from story problems to physical tasks by examining the effects of practice alone, without intervention or explicit prompting. Participants were 216 children aged 5-8 years. The microgenetic technique was incorporated with each age group by following them for six consecutive sessions of three trails each. The role of practice and age was investigated, not only on children's task behaviour, but also on their explanations of their actions. The results indicated that the ability to use analogy spontaneously improves over time with practice regardless of age, and that it develops over a protracted age range, with some children showing competence early, while others show poor performance at the age of 8 years. Furthermore, the study found development of analogical transfer to involve within-participant variability, as children showed competence on some trials but not on others. Although not a focus of the study, the results revealed intra-individual utilization deficiency in the domain of analogical transfer. It is concluded that there is strong evidence for gradual rather than step-like change in the development of analogical transfer. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.