Involvement of Executive Functions in Children's Metamemory

This experiment examined how knowledge of memory strategies and of memory functioning improves during childhood and what variables are involved in this development. Three main aspects of metamemory were assessed based on the performance of a group of 100 children (aged 4, 6, 9 and 11 years) on a battery of executive tasks. At the same time, the influence of variables such as intelligence, vocabulary and parental education level was also investigated. Results of mediation analyses reveal that the relation between children's age and internal strategy knowledge was partially mediated by working memory skills but that executive functions did not mediate the impact of chronological age on children's knowledge of external strategies or of memory functioning. Additionally, verbal fluency predicted internal and external strategy knowledge. Implications for general learning theories in childhood are discussed.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Children's Criteria for Representational Adequacy in the Perception of Simple Sonic Stimuli

This article describes how children build increasingly abstract knowledge of linear measurement, emphasizing ways they relate space and number. Assessments indicate children struggle to understand measurement, especially concepts related to complex paths as in perimeter tasks. This article draws on developmental accounts of children's knowledge of measurement to describe the coordination of cognitive processes as a progression through increasingly abstract layers of strategy (Clements, 2003; Lehrer, 2003) within a constructivist perspective (Steffe &; Cobb, 1988; Steffe &; Thompson, 2000). This article reports 4 case studies from a 6-month teaching experiment with Grade 4 students to examine ways of promoting their strategy development. Attending to children's understanding of length along straight objects alone proved inadequate in predicting and validating models of children's developing strategies and concepts for perimeter. Setting perimeter tasks that emphasized integral relations among unit of length, sides of polygons and perimeter, and prompting children to integrate partitive, iterative, and counting schemes appeared to promote increasingly abstract length measurement strategies. The researchers came to distinguish between a naïve use of units to find length (Level 2a) and a more abstract strategy for unitizing and iterating (Level 2b), extending an earlier framework (Clements, Battista, Sarama, Swaminathan, &; McMillen, 1997). Finally, implications for instruction are drawn from the development of tasks and questioning sequences.     

Cardinal limits: Evidence from language awareness and bilingualism for developing concepts of number

The study presented here investigated children's acquisition of cardinality in terms of a framework that isolates two cognitive processing components previously shown to be involved in children's metalinguistic development. These components are called analysis of knowledge and control of processing. In Study 1, children from 3 to 5 years of age were asked to solve three problems that required an understanding of cardinality. The problems were designed to place different demands on these processing components and examine their involvement in specific problems. In Study 2, bilingual children were given two of the problems to compare their performance to a new group of monolinguals. The results from both studies contribute to our knowledge of the development of cardinality by assessing children's ability across several tasks, by classifying those tasks in terms of their reliance on distinct processing components, and by providing a means for relating children's development of number concepts to their development of language. The results also contribute to our knowledge of the cognitive abilities of bilingual children. The implications of these results are that aspects of symbolic development may be a broadly based process that extends beyond domain-specific boundaries.     

The Development of Children's Knowledge of Attention and Resource Allocation in Single and Dual Tasks

Developmental changes in kindergarten, 1st-, and 4th-grade children's knowledge about the variables that affect attention sharing and resource allocation were examined. Findings from the 2 experiments showed that kindergartners understood that person and strategy variables affect performance in attention-sharing tasks. However, knowledge of how task variables affect performance was not evident to them and was inconsistent for 1st and 4th graders. Children's knowledge about resource allocation revealed a different pattern and varied according to the dissimilarity of task demands in the attention-sharing task. In Experiment 1, in which the dual attention tasks were similar (i.e., visual detection), kindergarten and 1st-grade children did not differentiate performance in single and dual tasks. Fourth graders demonstrated knowledge that performance on a single task would be better than performance on the dual tasks for only 2 of the variables examined. In Experiment 2, in which the dual attention tasks were dissimilar (i.e., visual and auditory detection), kindergarten and 1st-grade children demonstrated knowledge that performance in the single task would be better than in the dual tasks for 1 of the task variables examined. However, 4th-grade children consistently gave higher ratings for performance on the single than on the dual attention tasks for all variables examined. These findings (a) underscore that children's meta-attention is not unitary and (b) demonstrate that children's knowledge about variables affecting attention sharing and resource allocation have different developmental pathways. Results show that knowledge about attention sharing and about the factors that influence the control of attention develops slowly and undergoes reorganization in middle childhood.     

Patterns of problem‐solving in children's literacy and arithmetic

Patterns of problem‐solving among 5‐to‐7 year‐olds' were examined on a range of literacy (reading and spelling) and arithmetic‐based (addition and subtraction) problem‐solving tasks using verbal self‐reports to monitor strategy choice. The results showed higher levels of variability in the children's strategy choice across Years 1 and 2 on the arithmetic (addition and subtraction) than literacy‐based tasks (reading and spelling). However, across all four tasks, the children showed a tendency to move from less sophisticated procedural‐based strategies, which included phonological strategies for reading and spelling and counting‐all and finger modelling for addition and subtraction, to more efficient retrieval methods from Years 1 to 2. Distinct patterns in children's problem‐solving skill were identified on the literacy and arithmetic tasks using two separate cluster analyses. There was a strong association between these two profiles showing that those children with more advanced problem‐solving skills on the arithmetic tasks also showed more advanced profiles on the literacy tasks. The results highlight how different‐aged children show flexibility in their use of problem‐solving strategies across literacy and arithmetical contexts and reinforce the importance of studying variations in children's problem‐solving skill across different educational contexts.     

Equal Sharing and Shared Meaning: The Development of Fraction Concepts in a First-Grade Classroom

Work on learning from a situative point of view suggests that to understand how children's thinking about a domain such as fractions develops, research needs to take into account the socially organized ways of thinking in which children participate during instruction. The aim of the study reported in this article was to explore children's fraction learning in a 1st-grade classroom in which the teacher elicited and built on children's informal knowledge of fractions. Instruction revolved around children's solutions and discussions of equal-sharing tasks. The study provides an account of children's learning that examines the relation between classroom talk and children's evolving fraction concepts, with a focus on the analysis of several key classroom interactions that resulted in cognitive change. Pretests and posttests indicated that children's understanding of fractions changed in important ways. The results suggest that how children think about fractions is influenced not only by how their own knowledge is structured but, perhaps more profoundly, by how the context for thinking about and discussing fractions is structured.     

Cognitive Structure,Content Knowledge,and Classificatory Reasoning

Classificatory reasoning was studied in 58 children, 7 and 8 years old, who differed in operational level as well as in expertise. Knowledge about dinosaurs was used to distinguish expertise level. The children's performance on class-inclusion tasks involving the dinosaur content was a function of operational level. An overall effect of expertise was found for children's performance on class-membership measures. Furthermore, on the class-membership measures, expertise did not significantly influence the performance of children at the concrete-operational level, but it did for children at the pre-operational level. The results suggest that domain-specific knowledge and operational level may have different but interacting influences on children's classificatory reasoning.     

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.     

When Children's Knowledge of Memory Improves Children's Performance in Memory

One of the strongest hypotheses in the field of metacognition research involves the positive effect of metamemory on memory performance. However, owing to the lack of appropriate instruments to appraise knowledge of memory, few studies have examined this effect among children. This study was conducted to create and validate an instrument to assess children's metamemory knowledge and link this knowledge with their memory performance and strategy use. A sample of 166 children was given a new three‐factor metamemory interview, and its psychometric properties were investigated. Regression analyses were carried out to investigate the link between metamemory and memory performance in a subgroup of 128 children from the validation study. Results confirmed the scale's good psychometric properties and revealed its ability to predict children's memory performance. However, none of the scale's factors could predict children's use of memory strategies. Implications for the study of children's metamemory development are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

To Be Young,Gifted, and Strategic: Advantages for Memory Performance

Gifted and nongifted children's use of an organizational strategy was contrasted on multitrial free-recall tasks, using different sets of items on each trial. In an initial experiment, gifted children initially had higher levels of recall and strategic functioning than nongifted children, but this advantage was lost on later trials. While overall there was an advantage to memory of being strategic, this advantage was statistically significant for the gifted children only at trial 1, whereas it was significant for the nongifted children on trials 2 through 5. A sort-recall procedure was used in Experiment 2, with results indicating that gifted children benefited more than nongifted children when strategy use was simplified, while the results of Experiment 3, which used nonsense words as stimuli, demonstrated that gifted children demonstrated greater use of active strategies than nongifted children. The results of these experiments were interpreted as evidence that at least a portion of gifted children's advantage on free recall tasks lies in nonstrategic processes.     

Beyond competence: The significance of performance for conceptual development

Conceptual constraints must change with age if they are to account for children's acquisition of kinds of knowledge that do not fall within the initial constraints. A bi-directional relation between competence and performance is therefore hypothesized, such that cognitive competences not only guide performance but also are shaped by it. This hypothesis offers a solution to the difficulties that current competence models have in accounting for developmental change. Goals are proposed as a potential source of changing constraints because they change with age, they shape what children do, and they also influence what children learn from what they do. These ideas are illustrated with examples drawn primarily from research on children's quantitative concepts.     

Cognitive modifiability as a function of mother–child mediated learning strategies,mothers' acceptance–rejection,and children's personality

This study investigated (a) the effects of mediated learning experience (MLE) in mother–child interactions on cognitive modifiability as measured by dynamic assessment, (b) the effects of mothers' acceptance–rejection towards their children and the children's personality on the mothers' MLE strategies, (c) the combined effects of the mothers' acceptance–rejection, children's personality, and MLE strategies on children's cognitive modifiability, and (d) the prediction of cognitive modifiability by MLE interactions in two distinct conditions: free-play and structured. Fifty-four mother–child dyads (26 boys and 28 girls) in grade 2 were videotaped interacting in two situations: free-play and structured. The interactions were analysed with observation of mediation instrument using five criteria: intentionality and reciprocity, transcendence, meaning, feelings of competence, and regulation of behaviour. The children were administered the parent acceptance–rejection questionnaire, the personality assessment questionnaire, and the children's inferential thinking modifiability test. A distal–proximal factors of cognitive modifiability model was used to explain causal paths among mothers' acceptance–rejection and children's personality (distal) on MLE (proximal), and of both on children's cognitive modifiability. A structural equation model analysis revealed that (a) all MLE criteria were predicted by the distal factors of mothers' acceptance–rejection and children's personality, (b) none of the mothers' attitudes or children's personality factors explained the children's cognitive factors, (c) MLE criteria of transcendence and regulation of behaviour explained the children's CITM-post-teaching score but not the CITM-pre-teaching score. The results are discussed in relation to Feuerstein's MLE theory and Tzuriel's previous results with preschool children. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Assessing factors that influence young children's food preferences and choices

Researchers have identified an unbalanced diet as a key risk factor in the etiology of many chronic diseases (World Health Organization, 2003 ). Although researchers have found that numerous factors influence children's food choices, no assessment exists to identify these factors. In Experiment 1, we established preliminary empirical evidence of children's preferences for healthier and less‐healthy foods, and found that 16 of 21 children preferred less‐healthy foods to healthier foods. In Experiment 2, we established the utility of an analogue, competing parameters assessment designed to approximate children's food choices in the natural environment. We identified either quality or immediacy as the most influential parameters governing four of four childrens' food choices. We found that effort influenced the efficacy of these reinforcer parameters in a predictable manner for one of four children.     

Children's perceptions of the effectiveness of techniques to reduce fear from mass media

In two separate studies, children reported on their perceptions of the effectiveness of various strategies for reducing fright reactions to mass media stimuli. Three age groups were involved: preschool, 3 to 5 years; early elementary school, 6 to 7 years; and older elementary school, 9 to 11 years. The studies revealed that the perceived effectiveness of cognitive strategies, such as “tell yourself it's not real,” increased with age, whereas that of noncognitive strategies, such as “get something to eat or drink,” decreased with age. The differential effectiveness of the two types of strategies had been predicted on the basis of cognitive developmental differences among the groups. Specifically, developmental increases were assumed in the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality, in the ability to modify one's own thought processes, and in functional cognitive capacity. Methodological differences between Study 1 and Study 2 demonstrated that younger children's “yea-saying” tendencies can be circumvented by employing forced choices between pairs of alternative strategies. Both studies also revealed that scary television shows and movies are quite popular among children and that fright reactions to such offerings are prevalent.     

Are family therapists listening to the young? A psychological perspective*

This paper sets out to examine the family therapist's relationship to young children from a psychological perspective. Earlier contributions to the literature regarding the involvement of children in family sessions are reviewed briefly. Aspects of attachment theory and Piaget's theory of cognitive development are considered in terms of their implications for family therapy. It is argued that family therapists should be mindful of parents’ responsibilities for meeting their children's needs, particularly their need to experience predictability and to have a coherent story about their lives. The importance of exploring the effects of adult choices on the children is also emphasized.     

Encoding Strategies in Primary School Children: Insights From an Eye-Tracking Approach and the Role of Individual Differences in Attentional Control

The authors explored different aspects of encoding strategy use in primary school children by including (a) an encoding strategy task in which children's encoding strategy use was recorded through a remote eye-tracking device and, later, free recall and recognition for target items was assessed; and (b) tasks measuring resistance to interference (flanker task) and inhibition of attention to task-irrelevant stimuli (distractibility). Results revealed that the ability to inhibit distraction and resist interference undergoes developmental changes between the ages of 7–10 years. At the same time, children's capability to strategically focus on task-relevant aspects also continues to improve in primary school years. Although there were substantial relationships between encoding strategies and later recognition, encoding strategies appeared to be unrelated to basic aspects of attentional control.     

Low-Income Preschoolers' False-Belief Performance

A group of 72 preschoolers (36 African Americans, 36 European Americans) enrolled in Head Start programs and other preschools serving low-income children were asked 3 variations of false-belief questions across 3 scenarios and given a language and cognition subtest. Children's performance varied across the questions and tasks, but after covarying for children's language and cognitive scores, those effects were no longer found to be significant. Age effects were still significant even after differences in children's language and cognitive abilities had been accounted for. Although no language and cognitive differences were found among European Americans and African Americans, the European Americans still outperformed African Americans on 1 of the task scenarios. Those results demonstrate (a) the importance of considering testing procedures and language and cognitive abilities when assessing children's social cognitive skills and (b) that age-related changes in false-belief understanding are associated with social cognitive conceptual changes that are independent of language and cognitive skills.     

Antecedents of Children's Performance on Class Inclusion Tasks: Some Zimbabwean Evidence

An analysis of covariance hierarchical regression procedure was used to examine children's performance on verbally presented classification tasks in relation to the children's socio-cultural background, age, level of schooling, and sex. Task perception and motivation were entered as covariates. A total of 296 black and white Zimbabwean children took part in the study. Social class membership, age, level of schooling, and sex explained a significant proportion of the variance in performance on the classification tasks, whereas cultural group membership did not. Implications for multicultural perspectives on children's cognitive development are discussed and suggestions made for further research.     

Self‐regulated learning of basic arithmetic skills: A longitudinal study

Background. Several studies have examined young primary school children's use of strategies when solving simple addition and subtraction problems. Most of these studies have investigated students’ strategy use as if they were isolated processes. To date, we have little knowledge about how math strategies in young students are related to other important aspects in self‐regulated learning. Aim. The main purpose of this study was to examine relations between young primary school children's basic mathematical skills and their use of math strategies, their metacognitive competence and motivational beliefs, and to investigate how students with basic mathematics skills at various levels differ in respect to the different self‐regulation components. Sample. The participants were comprised of 27 Year 2 students, all from the same class. Method. The data were collected in three stages (autumn Year 2, spring Year 2, and autumn Year 3). The children's arithmetic skills were measured by age relevant tests, while strategy use, metacognitive competence, and motivational beliefs were assessed through individual interviews. The participants were divided into three performance groups; very good students, good students, and not‐so‐good students. Results. Analyses revealed that young primary school children at different levels of basic mathematics skill may differ in several important aspects of self‐regulated learning. Analyses revealed that a good performance in addition and subtraction was related not only to the children's use of advanced mathematics strategies, but also to domain‐specific metacognitive competence, ability attribution for success, effort attribution for failure, and high perceived self‐efficacy when using specific strategies. Conclusions. The results indicate that instructional efforts to facilitate self‐regulated learning of basic arithmetic skills should address cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational aspects of self‐regulation. This is particularly important for low‐performing students.