Enhancing adolescent girls’ argument skills in reasoning about personal and non-personal decisions

The present study sought to evaluate (a) the effectiveness of an intervention in developing adolescents’ argument skills regarding a decision on a topic of high potential personal relevance (teen pregnancy) or one of general social relevance (capital punishment), and (b) differential effects of the two topics in promoting the generalization of skills to a new topic. Thirty 14–15-year-old adolescent girls participated in an intervention on one of the two topics. The 16 sessions of the intervention were identical except for topic. Argument skills were assessed on both topics at pretest and posttest. Both interventions were effective in developing rudimentary argument skills, but only the intervention focusing on the personally relevant topic resulted in transfer to the less personal topic. Transfer in the opposite direction did not occur.