Does Inductive Reasoning Foster the Memory Strategy of Clustering from Slightly Retarded Children in Special Schools?

Thirty children from 2 classes of a special school for learning disabilities which were comparable to each other with respect to the relevant variables participated in an experiment on the memory strategy of categorizing. Based on the results of a pretest both classes were split into two groups of equal size and performance and assigned subsequently to two different treatment groups. One of these groups received a training to reason inductively, the other one an attentional training. At the end of this first training phase Catell’s CFT 20 intelligence test was conducted for both groups. After that both groups received an instruction of how to use the memory strategy of categorizing or clustering. At the end of this second phase the reasoning training group scored higher in the memory variables (i.e. number of reproduced items” and degree of categorical organisation”). This difference of performance showed up in a third CFT test after six months as well as in the memory variables without any training, except for a single refreshing lesson. The additional analysis for the second post test in individual cases shows that students who have received the mental training ( Denktraining für Jugendliche, Klauer, 1993) have 4 to 5-fold higher chance of successfully solving the commemorative tasks than students who were coached with the attention training.