Ninety-seven children aged 4-11 (49 males, 48 females, mostly White) were given the opportunity to improve their problem-solving performance by devising and implementing a novel cognitive offloading strategy. Across two phases, they searched for hidden rewards using maps that were either aligned or misaligned with the search space. In the second…

In collaborative problem solving, children produce and evaluate arguments for proposals. We investigated whether 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 192) can produce and evaluate arguments against those arguments (i.e., counter-arguments). In Study 1, each child within a peer dyad was privately given a reason to prefer one over another solution to a task. One…

Teaching supports the high-fidelity transmission of knowledge and skills. This study examined similarities and differences in caregiver teaching practices in the United States and Vanuatu (N = 125 caregiver and 3- to 8-year-old child pairs) during a collaborative problem-solving task. Caregivers used diverse verbal and nonverbal teaching practices…

Six experiments examined children's ability to make inferences using temporal order information. Children completed versions of a task involving a toy zoo; one version required reasoning about past events (search task) and the other required reasoning about future events (planning task). Children younger than 5 years failed both the search and the…

A study of the development of elementary school children's appreciation of riddles was conducted within the framework of the incongruity and resolution theory of humor. (ST)

Relates the problem-solving behavior of second, fourth, and sixth graders to conceptual tempo. Correlations with indices of strategic and efficient performance on a pattern-matching task confirmed that reflectives are more strategic than impulsives. A task-analysis identified the sources of inefficiency for each child and related these sources to…

Assesses ability of subjects aged 3 to 6 and 10 to 12 to solve a problem by analogy. Subjects had to discover ways to transfer balls to a bowl; stories read first to some subjects included an analogous problem and its solution. Older children's use of analogies was similar to that of adults; younger children exhibited different limitations.…

Two studies investigated two groups of young children at the ages of four and eight years, respectively. Subjects were required to solve a simple problem task by performing a response opposite to that demonstrated by an adult. Girls' performance was significantly worse than boys', regardless of the sex of the model. (Author/CI)

Responses to eight seriation tasks presented to 88 male kindergarten children and first-, second-, and third-grade students produced significant mean differences in explanations and strategies but no mean differences in judgment. A new experimental procedure, which allows explanations and strategies to be assessed, is advocated. (RH)

Observed in a laboratory setting how dyads, ages 4 and 6 years or 6 and 8 years, negotiated division of toys. Found that children used a preponderance of constructive problem-solving strategies rather than contentious tactics. Degree of conflict of interests and quality of sibling relationships predicted use of problem-solving and contentious…

This study was designed to determine whether modifying the task characteristics of the Stage 6 sensorimotor means-end problem (by introducing additional visual cues) aided task solution in children. Subjects were 80 children, ages 20-33 months. (CS)

Experiment I establishes that the ability to remember the slope of a line develops between three and four years of age. In Experiment II, 15 children with a mean age of four years and six months who had discriminated both slope and left-right problems under successive presentation were tested on these same discriminations under simultaneous…

Investigates the asserted differences in reasoning between adults and second, fourth, and sixth graders in a manipulation of variables task using class inclusion and story problems with common everyday situations. Results are discussed in terms of sensible reasoning and problem-solving skills. (CM)

Finds that, after being exposed to many isolation-of-variables assessment problems, most college subjects made immediate and substantial gains in formal reasoning, while preadolescents made gradual, modest gains. (RH)