Do Children Need Concrete Instantiations to Learn an Abstract Concept?

The effects of relevant concreteness on learning and transfer were investigated. Sixth grade students learned artificial instantiations of a simple mathematical concept. Some students were presented with instantiations that communicated concreteness relevant to the to-be-learned concept, while others learned generic instantiations involving abstract symbols. Results suggest that relevant concreteness may have some advantage over generic for learning. However, relevant concreteness hinders transfer of conceptual knowledge to novel isomorphic situations, while generic instantiations promote transfer