The microgenetic method. A direct means for studying cognitive development

Progress in understanding cognitive developmental change mechanisms requires methods that yield detailed data about particular changes. The microgenetic method is an approach that can yield such data. It involves (a) observations of individual children throughout the period of the change, (b) a high density of observations relative to the rate of change within that period, and (c) intensive trial-by-trial analyses intended to infer the processes that gave rise to the change. This approach can illuminate both qualitative and quantitative aspects of change, indicate the conditions under which changes occur, and yield otherwise unobtainable information about short-lived transition strategies. The cost in time and effort of such studies is often high, but the value of the information about change can more than justify the cost.     

A microgenetic investigation of stability and continuity in theory of mind development

The processes behind the transition from consistently failing tests of false belief understanding to consistently passing the tests was investigated by tracking changes in children's mental state understanding. Participants were 42 children (aged 3;1 to 4;3). There were two conditions; an experimental condition in which children were tested on a battery of eight theory of mind tests every four weeks for six phases of testing, and a control condition in which children only completed the battery of tests at the first and last testing phases. The profiles of performance showed that an understanding of false beliefs develops gradually and the development is relatively stable. An examination of the types of explanation children give on tests of false belief understanding showed that initially they rely on reality, then they progress through a period of confusion, where they do not provide an explanation, to a final stage in which they are able to explain behaviour by referring to an individual's false belief. Further analyses examined practice effects, construct validity, and the role of verbal ability on the development of mental state understanding.     

Step by step: A microgenetic study of the development of strategy choice in infancy

To examine patterns of strategy choice and discovery during problem‐solving of a novel locomotor task, 13.5‐ and 18‐month‐old infants were placed at the top of a staircase and encouraged to descend. Spontaneous stair descent strategy choices were documented step by step and trial by trial to provide a microgenetic account of problem‐solving in action. Younger infants tended to begin each trial walking, were more likely to choose walking with each successive step, and were more likely to lose their balance and have to be rescued by an experimenter. Conversely, older infants tended to begin each trial scooting, were more likely to choose scooting with each successive step, and were more likely to use a handrail to augment balance on stairs. Documenting problem‐solving microgenetically across age groups revealed striking similarities between younger infants' strategy development and older children's behaviour on more traditionally cognitive tasks, including using alternative strategies, mapping prior experiences with strategies to a novel task, and strengthening new strategies. As cognitive resources are taxed during a challenging task, resources available for weighing alternatives or inhibiting a well‐used strategy are reduced. With increased motor experience, infants can more easily consider alternative strategies and maintain those solutions over the course of the trial.     

The development of organizational strategies in children: evidence from a microgenetic longitudinal study

The authors examined memory on a sort-recall task in children 8 to 12 years of age. Children were first classified as either strategic or nonstrategic on a sort-recall pretest and then participated in an 11-week microgenetic study involving nine sessions. Strategy use was assessed on each trial. Consistent with past longitudinal research, changes from nonstrategic to strategic behavior occurred suddenly rather than gradually. Once children began using organizational strategies, their recall performance improved immediately. Deliberate strategy use was clearly reflected by sorting behavior during encoding but not in clustering during recall. Conclusions about whether there are children with utilization deficiencies are thus affected by how the concept is defined and whether sorting or clustering is taken as the indicator of spontaneous strategy use.     

A strategic assessment of deliberate self-harm

This paper describes how patients are interviewed in the context of a general hospital after they have been involved in an episode of self-harm. The interview schedule is structured upon the principles of brief therapy, and uses the 'neutral' approach of the Milan Team (Weakland 1974; Palazzoli et al. 1980). The schedule provides information for referring on and has proved to be 'therapeutic' in itself. The method of interviewing has been used in other hospital contexts with families where a member has been referred 'in a crisis' threatening, or indicating suicidal behaviour. It is suggested that the identification of who is involved systemically is of paramount importance, and that this may not involve 'the family' but significant others in the social network. The important systemic involvement of the general practitioner is recognized.     

A microgenetic study of simple division

How simple division strategies develop over a short period of time was examined with a microgenetic study. Grade 5 students (mean age = 10 years, 3 months) solved simple division problems in 8 weekly sessions. Performance improved with faster and more accurate responses across the study. Consistent with R. S. Siegler's (1996) overlapping waves model, strategies varied in their use. Direct retrieval increased, retrieval of multiplication facts remained steady, and addition facts, derived facts, and special tricks marginally decreased. Consistent with previous research, multiplication fact retrieval was the most common strategy, although it was slower and more error prone than direct retrieval. Strategy variability within and across individuals was striking across all of the sessions and underscores Siegler's (1996) assertion that development is in a constant transitional state. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).     

A microgenetic study of insightful problem solving

An eight-session microgenetic study of acquisition of an insightful problem-solving strategy was conducted. A total of 35 second graders who did not use this insightful strategy initially were assigned to two groups that differed in the frequency of problems likely to facilitate discovery and generalization of the strategy. Children in the facilitative problems group discovered the insightful strategy earlier, used it more often subsequently, and transferred it more often to novel problems than did those in the nonfacilitative problems group. Children generally discovered the insightful strategy on the most facilitative items and extended it progressively to items on which its advantages were smaller but still substantial. The results indicate that experience outside the experimental situation, as well as experience inside the experimental situation, influences use of new strategies.     

Learning strategies as determinants of memory deficiencies

Two tests were made of inferences about how learning strategies affect recall accuracy, and how peculiarities of strategy might account for mentally retardeds' memory deficiencies. Learning strategy was defined as the pattern of pauses generated by S as he paced himself through serial lists of letters. When given freedom to proceed as they wished, normally intelligent Ss paused increasingly the deeper they went into the list. Retarded Ss did not. It was concluded that the normals' active strategies contribute to their high primacy, while the retardeds' lack of distinctive pauses accounts for their low primacy. In the second test, the strategies were reversed. The normals were forced to abandon rehearsal; the retardeds were forced to rehearse. This resulted in greatly enhanced primacy for the retardeds, and greatly decreased primacy for the normals. In addition to showing how spontaneous strategies and forced strategies can directly influence recall accuracy, these findings suggest a reasonably simple means of mitigating short-term memory deficiencies.     

The strategic regulation of children's memory performance and suggestibility

We report two empirical studies that investigated previously reported benefits of a high accuracy motivation, and thus a high threshold, for children's and adults' event recall and for their ability to resist false suggestions. In the studies, 6-, 7-, and 8-year-olds, as well as adults, were shown a brief video about an event and were later asked unbiased and misleading questions about it. In Study 1, participants were either (a) given the typical accuracy instructions (including the option to answer with "I don't know"), (b) reminded of the accuracy instructions during the interview, or (c) immediately given feedback and a token for every correct answer. The results showed that the reminders were ineffective in stimulating strategic control behavior in children, independent of age. In Study 2, the confounding effects of feedback and incentives were disentangled by contrasting (a) free report, (b) feedback only, (c) incentives only, and (d) feedback plus incentives. Analyses on recall performance and suggestibility revealed that both feedback and incentives are necessary to increase children's accurate memory reports.     

图形推理任务中儿童策略获得的微观发展过程

运用微观发生学设计,对30名6岁儿童在矩阵填充任务中的策略获得过程进行了研究。结果发现:从策略获得的来源看,实验处理(教育干预)是图形推理策略获得的重要来源;从策略获得的个体差异看,儿童遵循的是学习领会或半学习领会的策略获得发展方式;从策略获得的路径看,快速组儿童在达到策略获得标准后正确率不高,而标准组和延迟组则能保持较高的正确率;从策略获得的速率看,在实验前3个阶段正确率有快速的变化,而到后期则保持正确率稳定不变。     

The adaptive nature of children's overestimation in a strategic memory task

Kindergarten, first-, and third-grade children were given a multitrial sort-recall task with different items on each trial. Children were asked to predict how many items they would recall prior to each trial. We classified children into high- and low-overestimation groups based on their prediction accuracy on the first two trials and assessed changes in recall and strategy use over trials (trials 4/5 minus trials 1/2). Following predictions, at all grades, children in the high-overestimation group showed greater gains (or fewer losses) in recall than children in the low-overestimation group. Differences in strategy use over trials were generally nonsignificant. The results were interpreted as reflecting the adaptive nature of children's overestimation of their cognitive abilities.     

The role of working memory capacity in autobiographical retrieval: individual differences in strategic search

Remembering previous experiences from one's personal past is a principal component of psychological well-being, personality, sense of self, decision making, and planning for the future. In the current study the ability to search for autobiographical information in memory was examined by having college students recall their Facebook friends. Individual differences in working memory capacity manifested itself in the search of autobiographical memory by way of the total number of friends remembered, the number of clusters of friends, size of clusters, and the speed with which participants could output their friends' names. Although working memory capacity was related to the ability to search autobiographical memory, participants did not differ in the manner in which they approached the search and used contextual cues to help query their memories. These results corroborate recent theorising, which suggests that working memory is a necessary component of self-generating contextual cues to strategically search memory for autobiographical information.     

The role of working memory capacity in autobiographical retrieval: Individual differences in strategic search

Remembering previous experiences from one's personal past is a principal component of psychological well-being, personality, sense of self, decision making, and planning for the future. In the current study the ability to search for autobiographical information in memory was examined by having college students recall their Facebook friends. Individual differences in working memory capacity manifested itself in the search of autobiographical memory by way of the total number of friends remembered, the number of clusters of friends, size of clusters, and the speed with which participants could output their friends' names. Although working memory capacity was related to the ability to search autobiographical memory, participants did not differ in the manner in which they approached the search and used contextual cues to help query their memories. These results corroborate recent theorising, which suggests that working memory is a necessary component of self-generating contextual cues to strategically search memory for autobiographical information.     

Associative and strategic components of episodic memory: a life-span dissociation

The authors investigated the strategic component (i.e., elaboration and organization of episodic features) and the associative component (i.e., binding processes) of episodic memory and their interactions in 4 age groups (10-12, 13-15, 20-25, and 70-75 years of age). On the basis of behavioral and neural evidence, the authors hypothesized that the two components are functionally related but follow different life-span gradients. In a fully crossed design, age differences in recognition memory for single words versus word pairs (associative demand manipulation) were examined under instructions that emphasized item, pair, or elaborative-pair encoding (strategy manipulation). As predicted, the results showed that the strategic and associative components follow different life-span trajectories. Relative to younger adults, children's difficulties in episodic memory primarily reflected lower levels of strategic functioning. In contrast, older adults showed impairments in both strategic and associative components. The authors conclude that the comparison of strategic and associative components of episodic memory across the life span helps to delineate the two components' unique and interactive contributions to episodic memory performance.     

The associative memory deficit of older adults: the role of strategy utilization

Past research has established an associative deficit hypothesis (e.g., M. Naveh-Benjamin, 2000) that attributes part of older adults' poor episodic memory performance to their difficulty in creating and retrieving cohesive episodes. Here, the authors evaluate the degree to which this deficit can be reduced by older adults' use of associative strategies. Young and older adults learned word pairs under either intentional-learning instructions or instructions eliciting associative strategies either at encoding or both at encoding and at retrieval, and they then took tests on their memory for both the components and the associations. Results replicated the associative deficit of older adults under intentional-learning instructions. In addition, they showed that instructions to use appropriate associative strategies during either encoding or, even more so, during encoding and retrieval resulted in a significant decrease in the associative deficit. The theoretical and applied implications of these results are discussed.     

Champ or chump: strategic utilization of dual social identities of others

The Jamaican‐born, Canadian sprinter, Ben Johnson, won the gold medal at the 1988 Olympics, but afterward was disqualified for steroid use. At the time Johnson's identity in the Canadian media appeared to shift—he was ‘Canadian’ after winning the gold medal but ‘Jamaican’ after disqualification. We tested this hypothesis via an archival study of a newspaper database of Canadian newspapers. The results confirmed the speculation. In the second study with Canadian research participants, the nationality of a fictional athlete was experimentally manipulated. He either possessed Canadian‐ American (shared) or Belgian‐American (non‐shared) identity. The athlete's performance outcome at an Olympic event was also manipulated. In the shared identity condition the athlete was perceived as more Canadian when he won than when he lost. There were no significant differences in nationality judgment when neither of the athlete's dual nationalities was Canadian. Results regarding perceptions of similarity paralleled the nationality‐ratings results. Findings from these two studies illustrate an interesting extension of BIRGing and CORFing strategies in which multiple social identities of others are used strategically to include or exclude others from the in‐group. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The influence of strategic monitoring on the neural correlates of prospective memory

The influence of strategic monitoring on the neural correlates of prospective memory was examined in two experiments. Strategic monitoring was manipulated by varying the context in which prospective cues occurred, with the cues requiring a prospective response in one task context and not the other. The N300, associated with cue detection, and the prospective positivity, associated with postretrieval processes, were elicited by prospective hits and were not elicited by prospective misses or ignore prospective cues. A parietal old-new effect was elicited by prospective misses and ignore prospective cues. Together these findings indicate that strategic monitoring may be necessary for cue detection and the recruitment of postretrieval processes, but not the recognition of a prospective cue as an old item. These findings serve to refine strategic monitoring and automatic associative accounts of prospective memory.