EFFECTS OF INFERENCING TRAINING ON VERBAL ABILITIES AND MATHEMATICS PROBLEM-SOLVING AMONG ADULT BASIC EDUCATION STUDENTS

In order to evaluate Sternberg's proposition, that vocabulary acquisition occurs as individuals learn the meaning of words they encounter in context, that that ability is essentially dependent on the ability to draw inferences, and that that ability is reflective of our ability to learn, an experiment was designed. Subjects were 40 adults enrolled in Adult Basic Education classes at a community college in the West, chosen for the experiment because this population is very much in need of innovative approaches to learning. The basic experimental design was a 2 x 3 factorial multivariate design using nonequivalent groups, with inferencing training and traditional training (control group) representing the levels of the manipulated independent variable and high, middle, and low levels of reading achievement included to control one source of extraneous variance. The verbal and mathematics pretests were covariates; and the parallel-form verbal and mathematics posttests, analyzed simultaneously, were the dependent variables. Mathematics problem solving was included as a dependent variable in order to ascertain if training in inferencing in language acquisition would be reflected in other areas of learning. The training sequence for both groups averaged two hours a week for 8 weeks. A pilot study using sixth grade students preceded the experiment for the purpose of establishing reliability and validity data on the verbal and mathematics measures.;The hypotheses that ABE students taught vocabulary in context and reasoning skills would do better on tests of verbal ability and mathematics ability than the control group were not supported. The suggestion is made that it is the implementation of the research design and not the treatment that should be considered as the primary explanation for the nonsignificant results. Nothing was found which refuted Sternberg's theory. Most of the findings tend to support aspects of his theory: there was a correlation between mathematics performance and reading performance; verbal ability correlated with ability to solve analogies and neologisms; more importantly, strategies did appear to vary according to performance level. Implications of this study are discussed and suggestions for further research made.