Notational strategies for problem solving in 5- to 7-year-olds

Author： Marti Eduardo Garcia-Mila Merce Teberosky Ana

ISSN： 1740-5629

Source： European Journal of Developmental Psychology, Vol.2, Iss.4, 2005-12, pp. : 364-384

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Abstract

The study focuses on the production and use of notations as a means to solve a memory problem. It reports results from two experiments. In the first, a memory task, 5- to 7-year-old children were asked to notate the contents of three identical boxes in order to later determine the identity and number of the objects inside the boxes once they had been closed and moved to a different position. Statistical analysis of the data revealed developmental trends in subjects' notational performance: prior to age seven their notations were generally ineffective in helping them to later determine the exact contents of the boxes. In order to rule out the possibility that their low performance on the memory task was due to their inability to represent information by means of a notation, we designed a second experiment, a representation task, in which subjects produced a notation to represent the same set of objects as in experiment 1. Results comparing performance on the two experiments (the memory and representation tasks) showed no differences at age five, statistical differences for identity at age six, and only marginal statistical differences for quantity at age seven, mainly due to the statistically significant age-trend in performance. Seven-year-olds' performance improved in both conditions, weakening the differences between the two conditions. These results suggest a metacognitive hypothesis that it is not until age seven that children begin to make the prospective analysis needed to solve the memory task.