Which Train Might Pass the Tunnel First? Testing a Learning Context Suitable for Children

Abstract

This article describes a nonverbal learning setting, using a miniature railway game, suitable for learning experiments with younger children. To test the setting a brief study on transitive responding was carried out. Children aged between 3 and 6 years were trained with pairs of different coloured trains A + B−, B + C−, C + D−, and D + E− conveying an hierarchical 5-term series A←B←C←D←E (where an arrow represents the relation: ‘A’ may pass the tunnel before ‘B’). Afterwards they were tested for transitivity with the novel test pair BD. The children learned the task quickly. On the average, they showed transitive decisions when confronted with test pair BD. However, among those children who reached the learning criterion, the 3- to 4-yr.-olds showed weaker transitivity than the 5- to 6-yr.-old children. The setting proved to be highly acceptable to the children. It can be potentially varied for operant conditioning tasks with younger children.