Transfer by Very Young Children in the Symbolic Retrieval Task

Abstract

Cumulative experience with a variety of symbolic artifacts has been hypothesized as a source of young children's increasing sensitivity to new symbol-referent relations. Evidence for this hypothesis comes from transfer studies showing that experience with a relatively easy symbolic retrieval task improves performance on a more difficult task. Significant transfer was found for the 2(1/2)-year-old children in the 3 studies reported here, even with relatively low levels of contextual support (according to the taxonomy of transfer by Barnett & Ceci, 2002). Transfer occurred even though the 2 tasks were encountered in very different settings and there was a prolonged (1-week) delay interval between them. Transfer also occurred to a much more difficult task (one that even 3-year-olds typically fail).