Development of the ability to distinguish between comprehension and memory: Evidence from strategy-selection tasks.

Four experiments investigated developmental changes in children's knowledge about the types of strategies that are appropriate for achieving the goals of comprehension or memorization. We assessed 1st and 3rd graders' recognition of the differential effectiveness of a memorization strategy (repetition) and a comprehension strategy (pictorial clarification of problematic words) for achieving memorization (verbatim recall of block-building instructions) or comprehension (following instructions for constructing a block building). Only 3rd graders distinguished between comprehension and memorization by consistently selecting the more effective strategy for both memorization and comprehension. Children's ability to distinguish between comprehension and memory in their strategy selections may depend, in part, on whether the context provides clear, concrete, overt, behavioral criteria for defining memorization and comprehension as distinct goals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's goals and strategies in response to conflicts within a friendship.

Little is known about the skills required for friendship, as distinct from those required for peer acceptance. The present study examined whether children's goals and strategies in friendship conflict situations are predictive of their friendship adjustment, after accounting for level of peer acceptance. Fourth- and 5th-grade children (N?=?696) responded to 30 hypothetical situations in which they were having a conflict with a friend. Results indicated that children's goals were highly related to their strategies and that children's goals and strategies were predictive of their real-life friendship adjustment. Pursuing the goal of revenge toward a friend was the goal or strategy most strongly associated with lacking friends and having poor-quality friendships. Gender differences were also found for each goal and strategy, with girls displaying a more prosocial goal and strategy orientation than boys. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

History of peer victimization and children's response to school bullying.

We examined the degree to which children with and without a history of stable peer victimization differentially endorse strategies for dealing with school bullies. Participants were 323 children, 58 of whom met criteria for chronic peer victimization. Children with a history of stable peer victimization differed from comparison children in how they rated various strategies, but the findings were gender specific. Chronically bullied girls were less inclined to endorse any strategy (coercive or noncoercive), whereas chronically bullied boys generally endorsed adult-recommended strategies. However, strategy endorsement for boys was associated with greater levels of peer victimization in the following grade. Discussed is the complex role of interpersonal strategies in affecting change in bullied children's victimization experiences and the implications for intervening on behalf of chronically bullied children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning to choose: Cognitive aging and strategy selection learning in decision making.

Decision makers often have to learn from experience. In these situations, people must use the available feedback to select the appropriate decision strategy. How does the ability to select decision strategies on the basis of experience change with age? We examined younger and older adults' strategy selection learning in a probabilistic inference task using a computational model of strategy selection learning. Older adults showed poorer decision performance compared with younger adults. In particular, older adults performed poorly in an environment favoring the use of a more cognitively demanding strategy. The results suggest that the impact of cognitive aging on strategy selection learning depends on the structure of the decision environment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Understanding the intentions of others: Re-enactment of intended acts by 18-month-old children.

Investigated whether children would re-enact what an adult actually did or what the adult intended to do. In Experiment, 1 children were shown an adult who tried, but failed, to perform certain target acts. Completed target acts were thus not observed. Children in comparison groups either saw the full target act or appropriate controls. Results showed that children could infer the adult's intended act by watching the failed attempts. Experiment 2 tested children's understanding of an inanimate object that traced the same movements as the person had followed. Children showed a completely different reaction to the mechanical device than to the person: They did not produce the target acts in this case. Eighteen-mo-olds situate people within a psychological framework that differentiates between the surface behavior of people and a deeper level involving goals and intentions. They have already adopted a fundamental aspect of folk psychology—persons (but not inanimate objects) are understood within a framework involving goals and intentions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental changes in the influence of assigned goals on cooperation and competition.

We examined developmental changes in the influence of social goals on cooperative and competitive behavior in children between the ages of 6 and 13. Children played a game with a neutrally instructed peer under cooperative and individualistic instructions. The tendency to engage in cooperative and combative moves and to use attentional words varied interactively with age, sex, order of instructions, instructions, and trials. Older children adapted their cooperative behavior to fit assigned goals when individualistic trials preceded cooperation trials, but younger children did not. Older children adapted their competitive behavior on two of five game trials, but younger children did not adapt their competitive behavior on any trials. We observed no developmental differences in the overall levels of cooperation and competition. However, younger children were more likely to use attentional words than older children, and both age groups used more attentional words under individualistic instructions than under cooperative instructions. The results suggest that older children were more flexible in adapting their social strategies to assigned goals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A prototype strategy for construction of personality scales.

Examined the predictive validity of different strategies for constructing personality scales. The Adjective Check List (ACL) was used as a common item pool to construct sets of 8 scales by each of 6 strategies. A prototype strategy was introduced as a proposed improvement on rational scale construction methodology. Its validity was compared with 4 traditional strategies (empirical, factor analytic, rational, and internal consistency) and 1 random strategy in predicting 8 criterion measures. Ss were 234 paid fraternity males (aged 18–26 yrs) who supplied ACL responses and 8 criterion measures in the form of peer ratings. Included in the 8 criteria were peer ratings on the traits of achievement, dominance, nurturance, affiliation, exhibition, autonomy, aggression, and deference. Zero-order correlational analyses were followed by multiple-regression procedures used in a double cross-validation design. The prototype strategy was statistically superior to all of the other strategies, and further research on this methodology is urged. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the tendency for volunteer helpers to give advice.

The responses of volunteers to telephone crisis calls were evaluated to determine the presence of appropriate types of statements to offer to a caller during the initial phase of a call. Sample responses were drawn from 350 males and females who volunteered for a community crisis-line service. Ss ranged in age from 18 to 65 yrs and had a wide range of educational and occupational experiences. Random selections of 30 tape-recorded responses to each of 12 simulated calls were analyzed using the scoring system reported by C. K. Whalen and J. V. Flowers (see record 1978-05656-001). At least 70% of the responses were advisements. The average percentage of advisements was particularly high for calls dealing with the areas of loneliness and dating. Feelings expressed by the callers were ignored by most of the volunteers. This pattern of many advisements and few reflections is considered inappropriate for the goals of most helping agencies. Implications for selection and training of volunteers are developed. (4 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's use of mental state information in selecting persuasive arguments.

Whether and when children use information about others' mental states to invent or select persuasive strategies were examined. In Study 1, preschoolers, 3rd-graders, and 6th-graders (ns?=?11, 12, and 16, respectively; 17 girls) were told about story characters' persuading parents to buy pets or toys. Children were either given or not given information about story parents' beliefs and asked to invent or select appropriate arguments. Older children, but not preschoolers, used belief information to select arguments. Results were replicated in Study 2 (16 kindergartners, 16 3rd-graders; 19 girls). In Study 3, kindergartners and 1st-graders (N?=?16; 6 girls) reasoned well on false-belief tasks but not on persuasion tasks, suggesting that failure to consider mental states in persuasion was not due to lack of a belief concept. Findings suggest that mental state understanding may continue to develop after the preschool years; methodological qualifications are also considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Strategy Development and Learning to Spell New Words: Generalization of a Process.

The authors used microgenetic methods in 2 experiments to examine children's and adults' progress from initial attempts at spelling nonwords to later direct memory retrieval of the spellings. Participants repeatedly spelled nonwords presented in computerized, dictated-word spelling tests over several weeks. Following each spelling, participants provided retrospective strategy reports. Half of the children showed a gradual shift from spelling words with effortful backup strategies to fast retrieval; half of the children continued using backup strategies that were fast and effective for them. Relatively more adults shifted from backup strategies to retrieval, but otherwise their patterns of spelling development were quite similar to those of the children. This research provides support for the generalizability of the overlapping waves model to nonalgorithmic domains. It also demonstrates parallels between children and adults in learning to spell new words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Quality and quantity goals in a complex decision task: Strategies and outcomes.

Examined issues related to quality goals, quantity goals, and strategy development in a complex decision task. 160 undergraduates used a computer program to select stocks for investments. Manipulated variables included task difficulty, quantity-goal difficulty, and quality-goal difficulty. Differences among participants' information-search strategies were identified and analyzed. A quantity-goal effect on performance quantity, a 3-way interaction on performance quality, and a number of effects for search-strategy variables were found. Implications and future research directions are presented and discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motivation by positive or negative role models: Regulatory focus determines who will best inspire us.

In 3 studies, the authors demonstrated that individuals are motivated by role models who encourage strategies that fit their regulatory concerns: Promotion-focused individuals, who favor a strategy of pursuing desirable outcomes, are most inspired by positive role models, who highlight strategies for achieving success; prevention-focused individuals, who favor a strategy of avoiding undesirable outcomes, are most motivated by negative role models, who highlight strategies for avoiding failure. In Studies 1 and 2, the authors primed promotion and prevention goals and then examined the impact of role models on motivation. Participants' academic motivation was increased by goal-congruent role models but decreased by goal-incongruent role models. In Study 3, participants were more likely to generate real-life role models that matched their chronic goals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Strategy acquisition and transfer among American and German children: Environmental influences on metacognitive development.

This study explored the differential effects of strategy training on German and American elementary-school children and assessed the role of parents in the development of their children's strategic behavior and metacognition. 184 German and 161 American children were pretested on memory and metamemory tasks. Children were then assigned to either an organizational strategy training condition or a control condition. All children were tested on the maintenance and far-transfer of the strategy and task-related metamemory 1 week following training. Parents completed questionnaires about strategy instruction in the home. Strategy maintenance and metacognition were reassessed 6 months following training. German children were more strategic than American children. Instructed children performed better than control children. German parents reported more instruction of strategies in the home. These data suggest that formal education is responsible for aspects of cognitive development that have sometimes been viewed as a function of age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental change in working memory strategies: From passive maintenance to active refreshing.

Change in strategies is often mentioned as a source of memory development. However, though performance in working memory tasks steadily improves during childhood, theories differ in linking this development to strategy changes. Whereas some theories, such as the time-based resource-sharing model, invoke the age-related increase in use and efficiency of a strategy of active maintenance of memory traces, other theories, such as the task-switching model, do not mention strategy change. According to these models, either the cognitive load of the task or the duration of maintenance would account for recall performance. In the present study, we varied orthogonally these 2 factors. The results revealed that a different and unique factor affected recall performance at different ages: the duration of maintenance at age 6 and the cognitive load at age 7. As described by the task-switching model, younger children would not implement any maintenance activities while performing a concurrent task, their memory traces suffering from a time-based decay. This suggests that an increasing capacity of cognitive monitoring allows children to shift from this passive maintenance of memory traces to the active refreshing thereof at around the age of 7, reunifying the 2 current accounts of working memory development as 2 developmental stages. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transfert d'une stratégie de mémorisation chez des enfants de 10 ans: étude des différences individuelles.

Studied spontaneous or induced use of an organization strategy on free recall tasks by children differing with regard to perceptual field dependence–field independence (i.e., global vs analytic perceptual style). Human Ss: 72 normal male and female school-age children (mean age 10 yrs). In a 2 by 2 by 2 experimental design, Ss were divided into 8 groups according to gender, perceptual style (global vs analytic), and treatment (control vs experimental). The groups received a brief illustration of a semantic organization strategy designed to promote memorization of verbal material. Ss performed 3 successive and identical recall tasks followed by 2 different tasks requiring either a transfer of maintenance or a transfer of generalization. Intergroup differences in memorization strategies and recall performances were analyzed. Tests used: The Group Embedded Figures Test. (English abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Understanding of emotional experience in autism: Insights from the personal accounts of high-functioning children with autism.

In this study, the authors investigate emotional understanding in autism through a discourse analytic framework to provide a window into children's strategies for interpreting emotional versus nonemotional encounters and consider the implications for the mechanisms underlying emotional understanding in typical development. Accounts were analyzed for thematic content and discourse structure. Whereas high-functioning children with autism were able to discuss contextually appropriate accounts of simple emotions, their strategies for interpreting all types of emotional (but not nonemotional) experiences differed from those used by typically developing children. High-functioning children with autism were less inclined to organize their emotional accounts in personalized causal-explanatory frameworks and displayed a tendency to describe visually salient elements of experiences seldom observed among comparison children. Findings suggest that children with autism possess less coherent representations of emotional experiences and use alternative strategies for interpreting emotionally evocative encounters. Discussion focuses on the significance of these findings for informing the nature of emotional dysfunction in autism as well as implications for theories of emotional understanding in typical development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Another source of individual differences: Strategy adaptivity to changing rates of success.

This article explores an alternative approach to the study of individual differences of cognitive function—that people may have the same strategies but differential ability to adaptively select among them in response to success and failure feedback from the environment. Three studies involving the complex and dynamic Kanfer–Ackerman Air Traffic Control Task (P. L. Ackerman & R. Kanfer, 1994) demonstrate (a) that individuals do differ systematically along this strategy adaptivity dimension, (b) that those differences have important consequences for overall task performance, and (c) that the differences are primarily associated with reasoning ability and working-memory capacity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of the ability to distinguish between comprehension and memory: Evidence from goal-state evaluation tasks.

Three experiments investigated developmental changes in children's ability to monitor and evaluate memorization and comprehension. First and 3rd graders rated the perceived difficulty of memorization (verbatim recall) and comprehension (block-building construction) after engaging in (a) a memory strategy (rote repetition) or a comprehension strategy (pictorial clarification of unfamiliar words; Exp 1); (b) no strategy or repetition (Exp 2); and (c) no strategy or clarification (Exp 3). In Exp 1, children recognized that clarification aided construction more than recall, but not that repetition aided recall more than construction. In Exp 2, children recognized that repetition aided recall but not construction. In Exp 3, children recognized that clarification aided construction more than recall. Thus, by 1st grade, children are sensitive to some aspects of the comprehension-memory distinction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Achievement goals in the classroom: Students' learning strategies and motivation processes.

We studied how specific motivational processes are related to the salience of mastery and performance goals in actual classroom settings. One hundred seventy-six students attending a junior high/high school for academically advanced students were randomly selected from one of their classes and responded to a questionnaire on their perceptions of the classroom goal orientation, use of effective learning strategies, task choices, attitudes, and causal attributions. Students who perceived an emphasis on mastery goals in the classroom reported using more effective strategies, preferred challenging tasks, had a more positive attitude toward the class, and had a stronger belief that success follows from one's effort. Students who perceived performance goals as salient tended to focus on their ability, evaluating their ability negatively and attributing failure to lack of ability. The pattern and strength of the findings suggest that the classroom goal orientation may facilitate the maintenance of adaptive motivation patterns when mastery goals are salient and are adopted by students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

SSL: A Theory of How People Learn to Select Strategies.

The assumption that people possess a repertoire of strategies to solve the inference problems they face has been raised repeatedly. However, a computational model specifying how people select strategies from their repertoire is still lacking. The proposed strategy selection learning (SSL) theory predicts a strategy selection process on the basis of reinforcement learning. The theory assumes that individuals develop subjective expectations for the strategies they have and select strategies proportional to their expectations, which are then updated on the basis of subsequent experience. The learning assumption was supported in 4 experimental studies. Participants substantially improved their inferences through feedback. In all 4 studies, the best-performing strategy from the participants' repertoires most accurately predicted the inferences after sufficient learning opportunities. When testing SSL against 3 models representing extensions of SSL and against an exemplar model assuming a memory-based inference process, the authors found that SSL predicted the inferences most accurately. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)