Psychology Commons^™

It Works Both Ways: Transfer Difficulties Between Manipulatives And Written Subtraction Solutions, Linda Hand

Linda Liu Hand

Three experiments compared performance and transfer among children aged 83-94 months after written or manipulatives instruction on two-digit subtraction. In Experiment 1a, children learned with manipulatives or with traditional written numerals. All children then completed a written posttest. Experiment 1b investigated whether salient or perceptually attractive manipulatives affected transfer. Experiment 2 investigated whether instruction with writing would transfer to a manipulatives-based posttest. Children demonstrated performance gains when the posttest format was identical to the instructed format, but failed to demonstrate transfer from the instructed format to an incongruent posttest. The results indicate that the problem in transferring from manipulatives instruction …