Concept attainment: I. The role of age and intelligence in concept attainment by induction.

Abstract

Most concept studies with children have utilized either the interviewquestionnaire method or the performance method (Vinacke, 1952, p. 108).

Retarded, Normal, and Superior Subjects' Attainment of Verbal Concepts at Two Levels of Inclusiveness

“…However, the results obtained herein agreed with relationships reported by Long and Welch (1942) who studied intellectually superior Ss at several age levels and Osler and Fivel (1961) who studied intellectllally superior and normal Ss at several age levels. Generally, these pairs of investigators observed that their Ss attained concepts with similar facility at two levels of inclusiveness corresponding to the levels used in the present study; they observed this similarity when words as well as pictures were used to portray specific instances.…”

“…The results of the present study did not disagree with results reported by investigators who used concrete and semi-concrete materials: Johnson and Blake (1960) and Martin and Blum (1961) who observed that retarded and normal Ss equated for MA did not differ in concept attainment; Osler and Fivel ( 1961) who found that the concept attainment of superior Ss exceeded that of normal Ss who had similar CAs.…”

“…Retarded and normal groups equated for MA did not differ in level of concept attainment (Martin & Blum, 1961;Johnson & Blake, 1960). Normal and superior groups equated for CA did differ; the superior group attained the higher level (Osler & Fivel, 1961 >. Blake and Williams (in press) studied the groups' use of induction and deduction in attaining concepts presented through verbal materials.…”

Do lower IQ children attain concepts more slowly than children of higher IQ?

“…The suggestion is made that previous jindings which report a A number of studies have found that, under some conditions at least, the mean number of errors to criterion in concept attainment is greater for lower-IQ children than for children ofhigher IQ (e.g., Osler & Fivel, 1961;Osler&Trautman, 1961;Wolff, 1967). These results have typically been interpreted as indicating that lower-IQ ehildren take longer to solve the eoneepts.…”

Effects of intelligence on the speed and frequency of problem solution in concept learning

“…In aseries of studies relating intelligence to concept learning, Osler and associates found that: (1) Ss of superior intelligence solve concepts more rapidly than lower·intelligence Ss; and (2) high·intelligence Ss learn insightfully, whereas lower-intelligence Ss learn by associative incremental learning (Osler & Fivel, 1961;Osler & Trautman, 1961;Osler & Weiss, 1962). In contrast, recent studies (Harnilton & Saltz, 1969; have found that: (I) when precriterion errors for concept solvers are Vincentized into quartiles no evidence of precriterion improvement is found for Ss of high or lower intelligence, and (2) intelligence is related to the frequency with which Ss solve problems but not to the speed of solution among the solvers.…”