Abstract
It has long been argued by many investigators that mentally retarded children have difficulty in transfering previously acquired cognitive strategies to a new task with different task requirements. It was thought that this difficulty occurred because these children do not spontaneously use metacognitive skill, which was regarded as an indispensable aspect of the transfer of cognitive strategies. In the present experiment, mentally retarded children were trained to use a self-checking skill that was applicable to a variety of cognitive tasks. The study then examined whether the children could take advantage of this trained skill on a transfer task. Subjects were 14 mentally retarded children, whose chronological ages ranged from 10:1 to 15:6, with a mean of 12:9, and whose measured mental ages ranged from 5:5 to 8:3, with a mean of 6:5. The subjects were divided into two equal groups: the training group and the control group. The training task was a recall readiness task; transfer was assessed on a match-to-sample task. Each subject was run individually. The experiment had three main phases. In Phase I (Pretest), all children were given the recall readiness test and the match-to-sample test, to assess their pretraining level of performance. In Phase II (Training), the children in the training group were given two days of training on the recall readiness task. In this training, the subjects initially observed a model perform the task using the self-checking skill (modeling). Then, subjects tried to do the task by themselves, although some assistance was given when needed (assisted performance). Finally, subjects were required to perform the task with no assistance (independent performance). On each of the two training days, a test was given at the end of the training (Posttest 1 and Posttest 2). The children in the control group were given the same materials as were used by the training group, but performed the task by themselves. Following Posttest 2, the match-to-sample task was given to all subjects as a test of transfer (Phase III). The results showed that (a) the mean number of items correctly recalled and the mean study time on the recall readiness task significantly increased with training in the training group, and (b) there was a significant decrease in the mean number of errors made by the training group on the transfer task. These results were regarded as an evidence that mentally retarded children are able to transfer a cognitive strategy if they have learned some kinds of metacognitive skill.
