Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Children’s capacity to remember a novel problem and to secure its future solution

Children’s capacity to remember a novel problem and to secure its future solution Much of humans’ success rests on foresight, the ability to predict what will happen or what is needed in the future. Surprisingly little is known about how this faculty develops. In three experiments (N = 170), 3‐ and 4‐year‐old children were presented with simple puzzles. Fifteen minutes later in a different room they were given the opportunity to secure a solution to take back to the puzzle. Only the older children performed above chance, whereas both age groups could solve the task in an instant condition. The same pattern of results emerged for another task involving selection of something to ‘feed ’ a puppet whose favorite food was initially unavailable. Control conditions suggest that temporal rather than spatial displacement influenced performance. Verbal reports substantiated the conclusion that by age 4 some children can remember a novel problem sufficiently enough to recognize a solution and select that solution in anticipation of applying it to the problem in the future. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Developmental Science Wiley

Children’s capacity to remember a novel problem and to secure its future solution

Download PDF
8 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/wiley/children-s-capacity-to-remember-a-novel-problem-and-to-secure-its-eYpw4V8ptA

References (44)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
ISSN
1363-755X
eISSN
1467-7687
DOI
10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.00950.x
pmid
21159085
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Much of humans’ success rests on foresight, the ability to predict what will happen or what is needed in the future. Surprisingly little is known about how this faculty develops. In three experiments (N = 170), 3‐ and 4‐year‐old children were presented with simple puzzles. Fifteen minutes later in a different room they were given the opportunity to secure a solution to take back to the puzzle. Only the older children performed above chance, whereas both age groups could solve the task in an instant condition. The same pattern of results emerged for another task involving selection of something to ‘feed ’ a puppet whose favorite food was initially unavailable. Control conditions suggest that temporal rather than spatial displacement influenced performance. Verbal reports substantiated the conclusion that by age 4 some children can remember a novel problem sufficiently enough to recognize a solution and select that solution in anticipation of applying it to the problem in the future.

Journal

Developmental Science – Wiley

Published: Jan 1, 2011

There are no references for this article.