Retention of sequences of responses by very young children as a function of instructional condition

Eight males and 8 females in each of 3 age-groups (28-31, 34-37, and 42-54 mo) were tested for their ability to process verbal and nonverbal instructional sequences. Each S was presented 3 different lengths of instruction in each of 4 different conditions: In the static condition each test item was prearranged in a receptacle so that during the trial the E told the S where to place the item while pointing to each item in each container; in the verbal instructions condition the S was simply told how to place the items in the containers; in the modeling condition, the S watched the E perform the task first; in the final condition, both modeling and verbal instructions were combined to determine whether adding modeling cues to the verbal instructions improved performance. Statistical analysis showed that performance in the static condition was significantly poorer than the performance in all other conditions. When instructions only indicated the prearranged location of items in containers, completion of the task was impaired relative to performance when modeling cues were added. Very young Ss did as well in the verbal conditioning as in the modeling condition. This experiment fails to support the superiority of visual over verbal information.