Social Influences on the Development of Planning in Advance and During Action

Abstract

This paper reports on a study of the development of children's planning skills with particular attention to the development of planning in advance of action as contrasted with planning during the course of action as adults and children plan together. The nature and extent of maternal assistance and child involvement during dyadic planning involving 40 mothers and their 4 or 8-year-old children, and the influence of the process of joint planning on the child's later individual planning were examined using a route planning task. In addition to planning in advance and planning-in-action, adult and child concern with the rules and organisational aspects of the task versus more strategic concerns were compared in the two ages to examine how microgenetic processes are responsive to ontogenetic development. Older children displayed more planfulness than younger children during interaction with an adult and later on their own, with the important difference being that the older children planned more during the course of action, a strategy that was related to the development of more effective plans during joint planning and to greater planfulness when children planned on their own. Mothers planning with older children were more concerned with strategy and mothers planning with younger children were more concerned with task procedures and rules, indicating that adults structure their guidance in relation to cognitive developmental needs.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bartlett, F. (1958). Thinking: An experimental and social study. New York: Basic Books .

Besevegis, E. & Neimark, E. (April, 1987). Executive control at an early age: Advance planning in solitary play . Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Baltimore, MD.

Brown, A. & Campione, J. (1984). Three faces of transfer: Implications for early competence, individual differences, and instruction. In M.E. Lamb , A.L. Brown , & B. Rogoff (Eds), Advances in developmental psychology, Vol. 3. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. , pp. 143-192.

Brown, J.S. , Collins, A. , & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning . Educational Researcher, 18, 32-42 .

Cocking, R.R. & Copple, C.E. (1987). Social influences on representational awareness: Plans for representing and plans as representation. In S. Friedman , E. Scholnick , & R.R. Cocking (Eds), Blueprints for thinking: The role of planning in cognitive development. Cambridge University Press , pp. 428-465.

Fraisse, P. (1963). The psychology of time. New York: Harper & Row .

Gardner, W.P. & Rogoff, B. (1990). Children's deliberateness in planning according to task circumstances . Developmental Psychology, 26, 480-487 .

Gauvain, M. (1989). Children's planning in social contexts: An observational study of kindergarteners' planning in the classroom. In L.T. Winegar (Ed.), Social interaction and the development of children's understanding. Norwood, NJ: Ablex , pp. 95-117.

Gauvain, M. & Rogoff, B. (1989). Collaborative problem solving and children's planning skills . Developmental Psychology, 25, 139-151 .

10.

Gearhart, M. (April, 1979). Social planning: Role play in a novel situation . Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, San Francisco.

11.

Goldin, S.E. & Hayes-Roth, B. (1980). Individual differences in planning processes. Rand Note:N-1488-ONR.

12.

Goodnow, J.J. (1987). Social aspects of planning. In S. Friedman , E. Scholnick , & R.R. Cocking (Eds), Blueprints for thinking: The role of planning in cognitive development. Cambridge University Press , pp. 179-201.

13.

Hudson, J. & Fivush, R. (1990). Planning in the preschool years: The emergence of plans from general event knowledge. Rutgers University, Unpublished manuscript.

14.

Inhelder, B. & Piaget, J. (1964). The early growth of logic in the child. New York: Norton .

15.

Karmiloff-Smith, A. & Inhelder, B. (1975). "If you want to get ahead, get a theory." Cognition, 3, 195-212 .

16.

Klahr, D. (1978). Goal formation, planning, and learning by pre-school problem solvers or: "My socks are in the dryer". In R.S. Siegler (Ed.), Children's thinking: What develops? Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. , pp. 181-212.

17.

Krietler, S. & Krietler, H. (1987). Conceptions and processes of planning: The developmental perspective. In S. Friedman , E. Scholnick , & R.R. Cocking (Eds), Blueprints for thinking: The role of planning in cognitive development. Cambridge University Press , pp. 205-272.

18.

Luria, A.R. (1976). Cognitive development: Its cultural and social foundations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .

19.

Magkaev, V. (1977). An experimental study of the planning function of thinking in young children. In M. Cole (Ed.), Soviet developmental psychology: An anthology. White Plains, NY: Sharpe , pp. 606-620.

20.

Mosier, C. & Rogoff, B. (1990). Infants' instrumental use of their mothers to achieve goals . Paper presented at the 7th International Conference on Infant Studies, Montreal.

21.

Pea, R.D. (1982). What is planning development the development of: In D.L. Forbes & M.T. Greenberg (Eds), Children's planning strategies. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass , pp. 5-27.

22.

Pea, R. & Hawkins, J. (1987). Planning in a chore scheduling task. In S. Friedman , E. Scholnick , & R.R. Cocking (Eds), Blueprints for thinking: The role of planning in psychological development. Cambridge University Press , pp. 273-302.

23.

Piaget, J. (1953). The origins of intelligence in the child. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul .

24.

Radziszewska, B. & Rogoff, B. (1988). Influence of adult and peer collaborators on children's planning skills . Developmental Psychology, 24, 840-848 .

25.

Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. New York: Oxford University Press .

26.

Rogoff, B. & Gardner, W.P. (1984). Guidance in cognitive development: An examination of mother-child instruction. In B. Rogoff & J. Lave (Eds), Everyday cognition: Its development in social context. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press , pp. 95-116.

27.

Rogoff, B. , Gauvain, M. , & Gardner, W. (1987). The development of children's skill in adjusting plans to circumstances. In S.L. Friedman , E.K. Scholnick , & R.R. Cocking (Eds), Blueprints for thinking: The role of planning in psychological development. Cambridge University Press , pp. 303-320.

28.

Rogoff, B. , Mistry, J. , Radziszewska, B. , & Germond, J. (1991). Infants' instrumental social interaction with adults. In S. Feinman (Ed.), Social referencing and the social construction of reality in infancy. New York: Plenum .

29.

Rosaldo, R. (1989). Culture and truth: The remaking of social analysis. Boston: Beacon .

30.

Szeminska, A. (1965). The evolution of thought: Some applications of research findings to educational practice . In P.H. Mussen (Ed.), European research in cognitive development, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 30, pp. 47-57 .

31.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .

32.

Wellman, H. , Fabricius, W. , & Sophian, C. (1985). The early development of planning. In H. Wellman (Ed.), Children's searching: The development of search skills and spatial representation. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. , p. 123-149.

33.

Willatts, P. (1984). The Stage IV infant's solution of problems requiring the use of supports . Infant Behavior and Development, 7, 125-134 .

34.

Willatts, P. (April 1989). Development of planning in infants . Paper presented at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society, St. Andrews.

35.

Willatts, P. & Rosie, K. (April 1989). Planning by 12-month-old infants . Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Kansas City.

36.

Willatts, P. , Domminey, C. , & Rosie, K. (April 1989). How two-year-olds use forward search strategy to solve problems . Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Kansas City.