The development of problem solving in young children: A Critical cognitive skill

Annual Review of Psychology

Volumn 62, Issue , 2011, Pages 1-21

  Keen, Rachel ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA   (United States)

Author keywords

cognitive development; infant development; motor development; motor skills; perceptual motor development; planning behavior; problem solving; tool use

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CHILD; CHILD DEVELOPMENT; COGNITION; HUMAN; INFANT; LEARNING; MOTIVATION; PRESCHOOL CHILD; PROBLEM SOLVING; RECREATION;

CHILD; CHILD DEVELOPMENT; CHILD, PRESCHOOL; COGNITION; CRITICAL PERIOD (PSYCHOLOGY); GOALS; HUMANS; INFANT; PLAY AND PLAYTHINGS; PROBLEM SOLVING;

EID: 78650968616     PISSN: 00664308     EISSN: 15452085     Source Type: Book Series    
DOI: 10.1146/annurev.psych.031809.130730     Document Type: Article

References (58)

1. Adalbjornsson CF, Fischman MG, Rudisill ME. 2008. The end-state comfort effect in young children. Res. Q. Exerc. Sport 79:36-41
2. Baker RK, Keen R. 2007. Tool use by young children: choosing the right tool for the task. Presented at biennial meet. Soc. Res. Child Dev., Boston, MA
3. Bascandziev I, Harris PL. 2010. The role of testimony in young children's solution of a gravity-driven invisible displacement task. Cogn. Dev. In press
4. Bates E, Carlson-Luden V, Bretherton I. 1980. Perceptual aspects of tool using in infancy. Infant Behav. Dev. 3:127-40
5. Bayley N. 1969. Manual for the Bayley Scales of Infant Development. New York: Psychol. Corp.
6. Berthier NE, Clifton RK, Gullipalli V, McCall DD, Robin DJ. 1996. Visual information and object size in the control of reaching. J. Motor Behav. 28:187-97
7. Brown A. 1990. Domain-specific principles affect learning and transfer in children. Cogn. Sci. 14:107-33
8. Bruner J. 1973. Organization of early skilled action. Child Dev. 44:1-11
9. Chen Y, Keen R, Rosander K, von Hofsten C. 2010. Movement planning reflects skill level and age change in toddlers. Child Dev. In press
10. Chen Z, Siegler R. 2000. Across the great divide: bridging the gap between understanding of toddlers' and other children's thinking. Monogr. Soc. Res. Child Dev. 65(2):i-vii, 1-96
11. Claxton LJ, Keen R, McCarty ME. 2003. Evidence of motor planning in infant reaching behavior. Psychol. Sci. 14:354-56
12. Claxton LJ, McCarty ME, Keen R. 2009. Self-directed action affects planning in tool-use tasks with toddlers. Infant Behav. Dev. 32:230-33
13. Clifton RK. 2002. Learning about infants. In Conceptions of Development: Lessons from the Laboratory, ed. DJ Lewkowicz, R Lickliter, pp. 135-63. New York: Psychol. Press
14. Clifton RK, Rochat P, Litovsky RY, Perris EE. 1991. Object representation guides infants' reaching in the dark. J. Exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform. 17:323-29
15. Clifton RK, Rochat P, Robin DJ, Berthier NE. 1994. Multimodal perception in the control of infant reaching. J. Exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform. 20:876-86
16. Connolly K, Dalgleish M. 1989. The emergence of a tool-using skill in infancy. Dev. Psychol. 6:894-912
17. Corbetta D, Thelen E. 2002. Behavioral fluctuations and the development of manual asymmetries in infancy: contributions of the dynamic system approach. In Handbook of Neuropsychology: Child Neuropsychology, Vol. 8, Pt. 1, ed. SJ Segalowitz, I Rapin, pp. 309-28. Amsterdam: Elsevier Sci.
18. Corbetta D, Williams J, Snapp-Childs W. 2006. Plasticity in the development of handedness: evidence from normal development and early asymmetric brain injury. Dev. Psychobiol. 48:460-71
19. Diamond J. 2005. Collapse: Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Penguin.
20. Friedman SL, Scholnick EK. 1997. An evolving "blueprint" for planning: psychological requirements, task characteristics, and social-cultural influences. In The Developmental Psychology of Planning: Why, How, and When Do We Plan?, ed. SL Friedman, EK Scholnick, pp. 3-22. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum
21. Gibson EJ, Pick AD. 2000. An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development. New York: Oxford Univ. Press
22. Hirsh-Pasek K, Golinkoff RM, Berk LE, Singer DG. 2009. A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool: Presenting the Evidence. New York: Oxford Univ. Press
23. Hood BM. 1995. Gravity rules for 2- to 4-year-olds? Cogn. Dev. 10:577-98
24. Joh A, Jaswal V, Keen R. 2010. Imagining a way out of the gravity bias: preschoolers can visualize the solution to a spatial problem. Child Dev. In press
25. Johnson-Frey SH, McCarty ME, Keen R. 2004. Reaching beyond spatial perception: effects of intended future actions on visually guided prehension. Visual Cogn. 11:371-99
26. Kohler W. 1927. The Mentality of Apes. New York: Harcourt
27. Koslowski B, Bruner JS. 1972. Learning to use a lever. Child Dev. 43:790-99
28. Kosslyn SM. 1975. Information representation in visual images. Cogn. Psychol. 7:341-70
29. Lockman JJ. 2000. A perception-action perspective on tool use development. Child Dev. 71:137-44
30. Lockman JJ, Ashmead DH, Bushnell EW. 1984. The development of anticipatory hand orientation during infancy. J. Exp. Child Psychol. 37:176-86
31. Manoel EJ, Moreira CRP. 2005. Planning manipulative hand movements: Do young children show the end-state comfort effect? J. Hum. Movement Stud. 49:93-114
32. Marteniuk RG, MacKenzie CL, Jeannerod M, Athenes A, Dugas C. 1987. Constraints on human arm movement trajectories. Can. J. Psychol. 41:365-78
33. McCarty ME, Clifton RK, Ashmead DH, Lee P, Goubet N. 2001a. How infants use vision for grasping objects. Child Dev. 72:973-87
34. McCarty ME, Clifton RK, Collard RR. 1999. Problem solving in infancy: the emergence of an action plan. Dev. Psychol. 35:1091-101
35. McCarty ME, Clifton RK, Collard RR. 2001b. The beginnings of tool use by infants and toddlers. Infancy 2:233-56
36. McCarty ME, Keen R. 2005. Facilitating problem-solving performance among 9- and 12-month-old infants. J. Cogn. Dev. 6:209-30
37. Metevier CM. 2006. Tool-using in rhesus monkeys and 36-month-old children: acquisition, comprehension, and individual differences. PhD thesis. Univ. Mass., Amherst
38. Metevier CM, Baker RK, Keen R. 2007. Knowing how to use tools independently does not guarantee their use in sequence. Poster at Soc. Res. Child Dev., Boston, MA
39. Michel GF. 1983. Development of hand-use preference during infancy. In Manual Specialization and the Developing Brain, ed. G Young, S Segalowitz, C Cortea, S Trehub, pp. 33-70. New York: Academic
40. Newell KM, Scully DM, McDonald PV, Baillargeon R. 1989. Task constraints and infant grip configurations. Dev. Psychobiol. 22:817-31
41. Piaget J. 1952. The Origins of Intelligence. New York: Int. Univ. Press
42. Richards CA, Sanderson JA. 1999. The role of imagination in facilitating deductive reasoning in 2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds. Cognition 72:B1-9
43. Rieser JJ, Garing AE, Young MF. 1994. Imagery, action, and young children's spatial orientation: It's not being there that counts, it's what one has in mind. Child Dev. 65:1262-78
44. Rosenbaum DA, Halloran ES, Cohen RG. 2006. Grasping movement plans. Psychol. Bull. Rev. 13:918-22
45. Rosenbaum DA, Marchak F, Barnes J, Vaughan J, Slotta J, Jorgenson M. 1990. Constraints for action-selection: overhand versus underhand grips. In Attention and Performance XIII, ed. M Jeannerod, pp. 321-42. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
46. Rosenbaum DA, van Heugten CM, Caldwell GE. 1996. From cognition to biomechanics and back: the end-state comfort effect and middle-is-faster effect. Acta Psychol. 94:59-85
47. Schulz LE, Bonawitz EB. 2007. Serious fun: preschoolers engage in more exploratory play when evidence is confounded. Dev. Psychol. 43:1045-50
48. Smith PK, Dutton S. 1979. Play and training in direct and innovative problem solving. Child Dev. 50:830-36
49. Smitsman AW. 1997. The development of tool use: changing boundaries between organism and environment. In Evolving Explanations of Development: Ecological Approaches to Organism-environment Systems, ed. C Dent-Read, P Zukow-Goldring, pp. 301-29. Washington, DC: Am. Psychol. Assoc.
50. Smitsman AW, Cox RFA. 2008. Perseveration in tool use: a window for understanding the dynamics of the action-selection process. Infancy 13:249-69
51. Spies JR, Keen R. 2010. Picking up tools: cognitive and motor factors in acquiring a new skill. Presented at biennial meet. Int. Conf. Infant Studies, Baltimore, MD
52. Van Leeuwen L, Smitsman A, van Leeuwen C. 1994. Affordances, perceptual complexity, and the development of tool use. J. Exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform. 20:174-91
53. Van Roon D, Van Der Kamp J, Steenbergen B. 2003. Constraints in children's learning to use spoons. In Development of Movement Coordination in Children: Applications in the Field of Ergonomics, Health Sciences and Sport, ed. G Savelsbergh, K Davids, J van der Kamp, S Bennett, pp. 75-93. London: Routledge
54. Von Hofsten C. 1980. Predictive reaching for moving objects by human infants. J. Exp. Child Psychol. 30:369-82
55. Von Hofsten C, Fazel-Zandy S. 1984. Development of visually guided hand orientation in reaching. J. Exp. Child Psychol. 38:208-19
56. Von Hofsten C, Ronnqvist L. 1988. Preparation for grasping an object: a developmental study. J. Exp. Psychol: Hum. Percept. Perform. 14:610-21
57. Want SC, Harris PL. 2001. Learning from other people's mistakes: causal understanding in learning to use a tool. Child Dev. 72:431-43
58. Wohldmann EL, Healy AF, Bourne LE. 2007. Pushing the limits of imagination: mental practice for learning sequences. J. Exp. Psychol.: Learn. Mem. Cogn. 33:254-61