Tutorials in domain-specific acquisition

Recent proposals in cognitive psychology allow us to question the view that learning consists essentially of constructing major general functions applicable in all situations and to grant some new validity to a ''domain-specific'' conception. This perspective is tested in an experimental study with 5; 5-year-old children. We show that their general knowledge about visuospatial relations are ineffective in the reading domain as long as they have not constructed the knowledge that, for letters (especially symmetrical letters p, b, q, and d), a change in orientation that does not modify the identity of other objects, does affect the identity of the letters. The specific learning tutorial we proposed to our experimental subjects helped them to acquire the fact that the orientation of symmetrical letters is a distinctive and relevant feature in the reading domain.