THE EFFECTS OF FORMAL REASONING TASK'S CHARACTERISTICS ON THE RESPONSES OF DIFFERENT AGE GROUP STUDENTS

This study investigated the effects on the performance of different age group students of: (1) aethod of task presentation; (2) format or test questionnaire; and (3) the numerical content of the tasks. The sample consisted of 556 students from grades 7, 9 and 12. The tasks, used for assessing reasoning skills, were taken from the Video-Taped Grclp Test. Experiment one tested the effect of the method of task presentation (video-taped demonstrations versus paper-and-pencil tasks with ilustrations). Experiment two tested the effect of questionnaire format (multiple-choice versus short essay answers) and experiment three tested the effect of the numerical content on the responses of students from different age groups. Analysis of the data indicated that method of task presentation had effect only on young students (grade seven) performance, while numerical content had effect on the majority o