LEARNING AND RETENTION: A COMPARISON BETWEEN PROGRAMMED AND DISCOVERY LEARNING AT TWO AGE LEVELS

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Abstract
A comparison was made between programmed and discovery learning at two age levels to test for retention. 80 female subjects, age range 24‐71, were given specially prepared courses of instruction in binary notation and a transfer task which consisted of converting numbers on punched paper tape into decimal notation. It was found that after a period of four months, the groups under 40 years of age suffered no significant loss of knowledge of the principles of binary notation nor decline in their ability to read punched paper tapes, whether they learned by programmed or discovery methods. But, it was found that for the groups over 50 years of age, only those groups who had learned by the discovery method did not experience a significant drop in retention scores on the principles test. However, on the transfer task, all the older groups experienced a significant drop in retention scores. It appeared that age was a more important variable than mode of learning in its effect on retention. But where differences in retention occurred between the two methods of learning, these favoured the discovery method.