Young Children Spontaneously Devise an Optimal External Solution to a Cognitive Problem

Autor/inn/en	Armitage, Kristy L.; Taylor, Alex H.; Suddendorf, Thomas; Redshaw, Jonathan
Titel	Young Children Spontaneously Devise an Optimal External Solution to a Cognitive Problem
Quelle	In: Developmental Science, 25 (2022) 3, (9 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Armitage, Kristy L.) ORCID (Taylor, Alex H.) ORCID (Suddendorf, Thomas) ORCID (Redshaw, Jonathan)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1467-7687
DOI	10.1111/desc.13204
Schlagwörter	Problem Solving; Metacognition; Preschool Children; Task Analysis; Learning Strategies + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Problemlösen; Meta cognitive ability; Meta-cognition; Metakognitive Fähigkeit; Metakognition; Pre-school age; Preschool age; Child; Children; Pre-school education; Preschool education; Vorschulalter; Kind; Kinder; Vorschulkind; Vorschulkinder; Vorschulerziehung; Vorschule; Aufgabenanalyse; Learning methode; Learning techniques; Lernmethode; Lernstrategie
Abstract	Metacognition plays an essential role in adults' cognitive offloading decisions. Despite possessing basic metacognitive capacities, however, preschool-aged children often fail to offload effectively. Here, we introduced 3- to 5-year-olds to a novel search task in which they were unlikely to perform optimally across trials without setting external reminders about the location of a target. Children watched as an experimenter first hid a target in one of three identical opaque containers. The containers were then shuffled out of view before children had to guess where the target was hidden. In the test phase, children could perform perfectly by simply placing a marker in a transparent jar attached to the target container prior to shuffling, and then later selecting the marked container. Children of all ages used this external strategy above chance levels if they had seen it demonstrated to them, but only the 4- and 5-year-olds independently devised the strategy to improve their future performance. These results suggest that, when necessary for optimal performance, even 4- and 5-year-olds can use metacognitive knowledge about their own future uncertainty to deploy effective external solutions. (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01