The purposes of this study were to investigate (1) the consistency among fifth-grade children in conceptual style across different conceptual style instruments and (2) the generalizability of conceptual style behavior to school related tasks when stability and instability of children's conceptual style were taken into consideration. Children switching styles from one conceptual task to another performed significantly higher on five different school-related tasks than children using a consistent style across the conceptual tasks. The implications of these findings suggest that an individual's conceptual style as well as the nature of school-related tasks must be analyzed in relation to instructional materials and methods. (Author)