Acquiring Conservation of Melody and Cross-Modal Transfer Through Successive Approximation

Abstract

First graders were pretested on conservation of four physical properties and conservation of melody. During three twenty-minute sessions, melody non-conservers were trained by either successive approximation only or successive approximation and verbal rule instruction. Both experimental procedures produced a significant number of posttest conservers on the melody training task and the melody transfer task. In addition, there was significant transfer of training to mass, weight, and number by the successive-approximation-only group.