Grade Level and Task Difficulty in Learning by Discovery and Verbal Reception Methods.

The present study compared the acquisition, retention, and transfer performance of subjects taught by the verbal reception and discovery methods. First-, third-, and sixth-grade subjects acquired a simple or complex conceptual rule by either the verbal reception or discovery method. The results indicated that discovery subjects took significantly longer than verbal reception subjects to reach the original learning criterion. Verbal reception subjects generally demonstrated performance which was superior to discovery subjects on all measures of retention and transfer. The level of task difficulty interacted with the method of instruction so that increases in task difficulty led to an increase in the differential effectiveness of the two teaching methods. Differences in experience with the two instructional methods was proposed as one of the variables contributing to the above results. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)