Effects of a Cognitive Acceleration Programme on Year 1 pupils (Updated)
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Thinking skills
What were the characteristic features of the activities used in the project?
The cognitive intervention activities were structured on the following schema (Click here for an explanation of these terms):
- seriation (putting things in order according to some quantity eg length, height, etc) (click here for a detailed example of a seriation activity);
- classifying shapes, animals etc;
- putting actions into a time sequence;
- spatial perception; and
- causality.
In one classification activity described by the authors, a collection of dinosaurs was introduced and the children sorted them by single variables such as colour or type. The teacher then asked the children to put all the T. Rex dinosaurs in one hoop and all the blue ones in another. Conflict arose over the blue T. Rex, which the children resolved by constructing the idea of overlapping the hoops.
Another activity about spatial perception involved children being seated in pairs around three sides of a table. On the table there was a model of a crossroads with various features such as buildings, vehicles, bus shelters and so on. The children were seated so that no pair could see all the features. The children selected from a set of pictures, firstly, the one that represented what they could see and then another showing what they thought another pair of children might be able to see.
One other schema, the conservation of quantities of liquids and solids was left out of the learning activities. The authors explained that this was to provide the researchers with an opportunity to measure the extent to which thinking skills developed in the main activities were transferable into a situation requiring different thinking skills. Since conservation was one of the pre- and post-tests, the absence of intervention activities related to conservation would allow any change in general cognitive development in that area to be assessed distinct from direct learning effects resulting from the activities.
