The present study was aimed at investigating i) the developmental change of the ability for concept learning, especially the ability for retaining the criterion which was acquired through the practice of classification of individual cases; ii) the effect of practice without external reinforcement on concept learning.
Twenty-five 1st-graders, 22 3rd-graders, 18 5th-graders and 10 undergraduate students served as Ss. In the preliminary experiment Ss performed a simple concept learning task to acquaint themselves with the experimental situation of concept learning. Eight Ss could not reach the criterion of success in this task and were excluded from the main experiment that followed.
In the main experiment 32 cards were presented, on each of which was drawn a pair of stimuli that varied on 4 binary dimensions. Ss were asked to compare two stimuli (X_i, X_j) in terms of the relation, >, =or<. The rule was that “if X_i, X_j∈A or X_i, X_j∈A, then X_i=X_j” and that “if X_i∈A and X_j∈A, then X_i>X_j”. It was also informed that the positive value on one dimension defined class A, while two of 4 dimensions were distinctively irrelevant, the remaining two covaried in 7/8 of the trials, making it difficult to determine a relevant dimension.
Ss who reached the criterion of 14/16 correct responses before the termination of the reinforced practice after 4 round exposures were given trials without external reinforcement. They were tested as for the ability to judge pairs of new stimuli, for which none of the 4 dimensions correlated with each other, on the basis of one relevant cue disregarding the other, Some of them were also given “practice in conflict situations” -in which two apparently valid criteria would lead to the opposite conclusion-and were asked to verbalize “his” critetrion of a class (both without confirming information).
The results were as follows:
i) The proportion of Ss who reached the criterion was highly correlated with age. Of 23 1st-graders only 5 reached the criterion, while 13 of 19 3rd-graders and 13 of 16 5th-graders could identify the correct criterion. All of the undergraduates succceed in learning with about 1/10 of the average errors made by elementary school pupils.
ii) It was very difficult for elementary school pupils to disregard one of the two apparently relevant cues in the experiment. Only 4 out of 31 who had reached the criterion showed a consistent response pattern based on correct criterion from the beginning of trials without reinforcement. On the contrary, 8 of 9 undergraduate students showed such a pattern. This result might be interpreted that young children judged on cumulative intuitive impression, lacking a deliberately selected hypotheses. Children who could respond correctly when the relevant cue was explicitly present often based their judgment on another apparently relevant cue when values of relevant dimension were the same in both of the paired stimuli.
iii) In the process of judgment without confirming information, however, lack of consistency in children's response patterns gradually decreased. On test trials given after 36 or less trials without reinforcement, 11 out of 27 pupils could disregard irrelevant cue completely. This imrovement of performance without external reinforcement seemed to be essentially the same process as the acqusition of conservation by Smedslund's “practice in conflict situations”.

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ここ報告する実験は大別して2つの部分より成っている。1つは図形構成課題における教示の効果, 他は文字・数字・図形系列の規則性発見課題における教示の効果についてである。教示の効果は単に言語的に与えられるよりも類似の課題における経験を通じて与えられる場合の方が有効であると考えられるが, この点にっいても同時に検討した。さらにとの問題を発達的な観点から検討するために, 小学校6年生と中学校2年生について実験をおこなつた。これらめ実験の結果を要約するとつぎのようになる。
1.一般的な傾向として, 課題解決に関する言語的教示は, 図形構成, 規則性発見両課題において積極的効果を示した。練習課題と解決過程吟味の機会を与えられた場合, 教示の効果は促進される。
2.図形構成課題におけるよりも規則性発見課題において教示の効果は大であった。, この結果は教示が課題の要求する心理学的機能に見合つたものである場合に教示の効果が現われることを示すものと解釈された。
3.図形構成, 規則性発見両課題において, 教示の効果は中学2年生の被験者群においては小学6年生におけるよりも減少する傾向がみられた。また1規則性発見における教示の効果を系列別にみた場合, 中学生被験者群においては教示が必ずしも積極的な方向に作用してはいない。ここに発達的要因の複雑な影響が考えられる

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