Poster #44 - Young Children's Opportunities to Develop Planning Skills While Collaborating With a Parent

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

This research investigated children’s opportunities to develop planning skills while collaborating with their parent. Planning, a complex cognitive skill, involves the anticipation and organization of future-oriented actions toward achieving a goal, emerges early in childhood, and has a protracted developmental course. Sociocultural theory and research findings across middle childhood show that planning benefits from guidance of more skilled partners. Socialization and guidance from others may be particularly beneficial during early childhood when rudimentary planning skills are emerging. We examined these processes in children ages 3-5. We investigated changes in children’s planning across trials that involved solitary and joint planning with a parent. We used a novel task format that builds from previous research and is representative of everyday activities. We examined qualitative differences in children’s involvement in joint planning and expected that more responsibility for task completion versus cursory involvement would relate to improved performance.
Eighty-one dyads (41 boys, M = 52 months) visited the lab. A task developed by Gardner and Rogoff (1990) consisting of mazes in concentric rings was used. The task was modified to be completed on a tablet. Children completed a solitary pretest, parent-child dyads worked together, and finally children completed a posttest. We coded videos for planning performance (number of solution attempts, trial and error strategies, planning in advance). Child behaviors (involved in the task, off task, cooperative with parent, responsible for solution) and parent behaviors (provided guidance, directed child’s behaviors, physically intervened with child, and kept child involved) were rated on a 5-point scale.
A repeated measures ANOVA examined differences in planning performance across trials. Results indicated a multivariate effect, F (6, 61) = 24.44, p < .001, η2 = .67 with significant main effects for all variables. There were quadratic effects for number of attempts, F (1, 76) = 6.74, p < .05, η2 = .08, and advanced planning, F (1, 76) = 46.36, p < .001, η2 = .38, and a linear effect for trial and error strategies, F (1, 76) = 76.24, p < .001, η2 = 50 (Figure 1). Performance was better when dyads worked together. In the posttest, children maintained lower use of trial and error, but reverted to poorer performance in other indices.
Correlations revealed children who were off task had parents who physically intervened more. Children who had more responsibility for the maze solution had parents who provided less guidance and were less likely to be directive, intervene physically, and keep the child involved (r’s = .25 - .61, p’s < .05).
In hierarchical regressions (Table 2) predicting posttest performance, step 1 included pretest and parent-child interaction performance and step 2 included either interaction child behaviors or parent behaviors. Children who were more involved in dyadic planning displayed poorer posttest performance in comparison to children who were more responsible for completing the maze, suggesting that mere involvement may not be as beneficial as substantive responsibility for the task during joint planning. The poster will examine additional child factors in predicting variation in joint planning and posttest performance.

Authors

• Susan M Perez, University of North Florida
  Presenting Author

• Sierra Ejankowski, University of North Florida
  Non-Presenting Author