The purpose of this study was to determine whether familiarity was a significant factor in increased cognitive synthesis scores and to conduct a comparison of the training methods employed on the basis of the test score patterns. Previous studies had revealed that symbolic representation was important, but they had not clarified the ways in which such development was facilitated. Fifty-six kindergarten children were randomly assigned to one of four training conditions--Familiarity, Learning Set A, Learning Set B, Control. Each student was pretested on tasks devised by Farnham-Diggory, and posttested for transfer of cognitive synthesis. Results show that "familiarity" is the most probable cause of increased cognitive synthesis scores and that use of a transfer task as a measure of learning is important. Hall's method of direct instruction was found to result in an apparent, surface understanding. It was cautioned that this condition might result in an overestimation of the effects of teaching, and in the long run, be detrimental to the teacher's attempts to provide a suitable learning environment. (CS)