Mechanisms of cognitive development.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Association↗
Biomedical subjects
R S Siegler
Publications and source records attributed to R S Siegler.
How children choose among serial recall strategies.
A theoretical and methodological approach originally developed to investigate preschoolers' arithmetic strategies was extended to the study of 5-8-year-olds' serial recall strategies. Immediately retrospective verbal reports, together with observation of overt behavior, indicated a number of parallels between strategy choices in the 2 areas. In serial recall, as in arithmetic, most children used multiple approaches. Even among the youngest children, the majority sometimes used the most effective strategy, repeated rehearsal. Changes in strategy choices were adaptive in the sense of children rehearsing more often when not rehearsing on the previous trial had led to incorrect recall. Developmental changes occurred in how often children rehearsed, in how accurately they executed each strategy, and in the type of rehearsal that they used most frequently. Only small changes were apparent, however, in whether the 5-8-year-olds rehearsed at all.
Attention↗
Strategy choice procedures and the development of multiplication skill.
Many intelligent strategy choices may be accomplished through relatively low-level cognitive processes. This article describes a detailed model of how such "mindless" processes might lead to intelligent choices of strategies in one common situation: that in which people need to choose between stating a retrieved answer and using a backup strategy. Several experiments testing the model's applicability to children's single-digit multiplication are reported. These include tests of predictions about when different strategies are used and how early experience shapes later performance. Then, the sufficiency of the model to generate both performance at any one time and changes in performance over time is tested through the medium of a running computer simulation of children's multiplication. The simulation acquires a considerable amount of multiplication knowledge, and its learning and performance parallel those of children in a number of ways. Finally, several implications of the model for understanding cognitive self-regulation and cognitive development are discussed.
Association Learning↗
Individual differences in strategy choices: good students, not-so-good students, and perfectionists.
Consistent individual differences were found in first graders' strategy choices in addition, subtraction, and reading (word identification). Differences were present along 2 dimensions: knowledge of problems and stringency of thresholds for stating retrieved answers. Cluster analyses indicated that children could be classified into 3 groups: good students, not-so-good students, and perfectionists. Perfectionists were children who had good knowledge of problems and set very high thresholds for stating retrieved answers, good students also had good knowledge of problems but set lower thresholds, and not-so-good students had less good knowledge of problems and set low thresholds. Differences among the 3 groups were evident on measures not included in the cluster analysis as well as measures that were. Further, the groups differed in standardized achievement test performance 4 months after the experiment in ways consistent with the experimental analysis. The pattern of individual differences was similar in 2 experiments with different samples of children and problems and different methods for assessing strategy use. The results illustrated how detailed cognitive models can contribute to understanding of individual differences.
Achievement↗
Children's understandings of the attributes of life.
Previous investigations of children's understandings of the life concept have focused on their classifications of the life status of familiar objects. In this study, we attempted to examine more directly the processes by which children infer life status by examining their reasoning about unfamiliar objects. In Experiment 1, 4- to 11-year-olds and adults were asked to name attributes of living things to establish which attributes they associated most closely with life. Children age 7 and younger most often named attributes true only of animals but not of plants; older children more often named attributes true of both animals and plants. However, movement was the single attribute cited most frequently by children of all ages tested. In Experiment 2, 4- to 11-year-olds and adults were presented information about attributes of imaginary objects on a distant planet and were asked to infer if those objects were alive. Again, young children relied relatively heavily on qualities true only of animals but not of plants, whereas older children relied more on attributes true of both plants and animals. Also as before, movement was viewed as indicative of life at all ages tested. In Experiment 3, we examined the hypothesis that children discriminate among different types of motion and that the types of motion they associate with life are in fact typical of living things. Children ranging from age 5 through 11 were found to discriminate among different types of motion and to infer that objects were alive only when they showed the types of motion typical of living beings. The results of Experiment 3 allowed interpretation of seemingly conflicting results that have arisen in previous studies, as well as in Experiments 1 and 2 of the present study.
Child↗
The development of numerical understanding.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Child↗
The representation of children's knowledge.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Adolescent↗
Explanation and generalization in young children's strategy learning.
Children often learn new problem-solving strategies by observing examples of other people's problem-solving. When children learn a new strategy through observation and also explain the new strategy to themselves, they generalize the strategy more widely than children who learn a new strategy but do not explain. We tested three hypothesized mechanisms through which explanations might facilitate strategy generalization: more accurate recall of the new strategy's procedures; increased selection of the new strategy over competing strategies; or more effective management of the new strategy's goal structure. Findings supported the third mechanism: Explanations facilitated generalization through the creation of novel goal structures that enabled children to persist in use of the new strategy despite potential interference from competing strategies. The facilitative effect of explanation did vary with children's age and did not vary between explanations children created by themselves versus explanations they learned from the experimenter.
Analysis of Variance↗
Learning to spell: variability, choice, and change in children's strategy use.
We examined whether the overlapping waves model, originally developed to account for strategy choices in arithmetic, could also account for strategy choices in spelling. The contrast was of particular interest because arithmetic is an algorithmic domain (a domain that includes strategies that always yield correct answers if executed properly), whereas spelling is not. Thirty first-grade students spelled words under 2 conditions, and 23 of these students were retested in second grade. Trial-by-trial analysis of strategy use was used to identify which strategies first and second graders used, how adaptively they chose among them, how effective the strategies were, and what changes occurred from first to second grade along each dimension. The model proved useful for understanding the development of spelling, despite the fact that explicit use of backup strategies had a minimal impact on accuracy. Implications for understanding adaptive strategy choices in algorithmic and nonalgorithmic domains are discussed.
Achievement↗
The rebirth of children's learning.
Learning is a central part of children's lives, but the study of learning is a rather peripheral part of the field of cognitive development. Fortunately, this situation is starting to change; recent theoretical and methodological advances have sparked renewed interest in children's learning. This renewed interest has already yielded a set of consistent and interesting findings regarding how children learn, as well as intriguing proposals regarding the mechanisms that underlie the learning. Increasing our focus on children's learning promises to yield practical benefits as well as a more exciting field of cognitive development.
Child↗
Buy low, sell high: the development of an informal theory of economics.
Two experiments were conducted to examine the development of economic understanding among 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds (n = 31, 29, and 32, respectively). Most 5-year-olds exhibited understanding of the goal of acquiring desired goods but not of the goals of seeking profits, acquiring goods inexpensively, or competing successfully with other sellers. In contrast, most 7-year-olds and a large majority of 9-year-olds showed understanding of all of these concepts. The older children's understanding of these key concepts and the relations among them suggested that they had constructed an informal theory of economics, qualitatively different from the psychologically based understanding of the 5-year-olds. Increased information-processing skills appeared to be among the sources of this new understanding.
Age Factors↗