| Abstract: | While much is known about adult problem-solving, the materials, analyses, and theoretical issues from the adult literature rarely make contact with the tasks typically used to investigate children's thinking. This paper examines the behavior of 4-, 5-, and 6-year-old children attempting to solve a novel variant of the Tower of Hanoi task. Problems varied in difficulty (one to seven moves for the minimum path solution) and in goal type: tower (all objects on one peg) or flat (all pegs occupied). For each problem, children gave verbal statements of their complete solution plan. The Plan Analysis examined performance as a function of goal type and age. Better performance was observed for tower ending problems, and among older children. The Error Analysis revealed that specific error propensities were related to both age and goal type. The Strategic Analysis compared the first move profiles of 6-year-olds to those of several plausible move selection models, and a high degree of correspondence was obtained between specific models and individual children. Young children appear to have rudimentary forms of many of the problem-solving processes previously identified in adults, but they may differ in encoding and representational processes. |
