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The development of children's understanding of cognitive activities: Conceptual knowledge, phenomenological awareness, and social experience
Abstract
Children's knowledge about the occurrence of cognitive activities and their influence on a person's knowledge, beliefs, and behavior increases greatly during middle and late childhood. Knowledge of cognitive activities, such as memory, attention, reasoning, and the stream of consciousness, contributes to the development of children's social understanding, academic skills, understanding of science, and concepts of knowledge. In addition, children's understanding of cognition may provides a developmental bridge from young children's understanding of mental states to adolescents' and adults' epistemological reflection. This chapter proposes that knowledge of cognitive activities emerges through mutual influence among (a) children's conceptual knowledge of cognition, (b) children's phenomenological awareness of their own cognitive activities, and c) children's social experience. Research concerning children's knowledge of cognitive activities, cognitive monitoring, and the social influences on metacognitive development is reviewed, and directions for future research are identified.
... As such, it is the basic mechanism of mental time travel linking the present (perception) with the past (experience) and the future (problem solving) in many mental processes, simple, such as episodic memory, and complex, such as construction of the self. Thus, it allows individuals to learn actively and handle the unexpected (Beran, Brandl, Perner, & Proust, 2012;Carruthers, 2009;Demetriou, 2000;Michaelian, 2016;Piaget, 2001;Pillow, 2011). ...
... Researchers studied various aspects of cognizance. Among others, reflective abstraction (revisiting past experiences to search for commonalities between them) (Piaget, 2001), metacognition (knowing about knowing) (Beran et al., 2012;Flavell, 1979;Pillow, 2008Pillow, , 2011Zelazo, 2015), and theory of mind (ToM; Wellman, 2014) (awareness about other person's mental states) are aspects of cognizance. Although there is research on the relations between these processes in development (Carruthers, 2009;Lyons & Zelazo, 2011;Schneider, 2008), there is no commonly accepted model for them. ...
... Researchers studied various aspects of cognizance. Among others, reflective abstraction (revisiting past experiences to search for commonalities between them) (Piaget, 2001), metacognition (knowing about knowing) (Beran et al., 2012;Flavell, 1979;Pillow, 2008Pillow, , 2011Zelazo, 2015), and theory of mind (ToM; Wellman, 2014) (awareness about other person's mental states) are aspects of cognizance. Although there is research on the relations between these processes in development (Carruthers, 2009;Lyons & Zelazo, 2011;Schneider, 2008), there is no commonly accepted model for them. ...
This paper summarizes research on how cognizance, that is, awareness of mental processes, interacts with executive control and reasoning from childhood to adolescence. Central positions are that (a) cognizance changes extensively with age; (b) it contributes to the formation of executive control, and (c) mediates between executive control and reasoning. Cognizance recycles with changes in executive and inferential possibilities in four developmental cycles: it registers their present state, yielding insight into their operation, allowing their better management; this catalyzes their transformation into the next level. Implications for theory of intellectual development and practical implications for education are discussed.
This article is categorized under:
• Psychology > Development and Aging
• Neuroscience > Cognition
• Neuroscience > Development
• Philosophy > Consciousness
20 2nd, 20 4th, and 20 6th graders (a) judged the relative effectiveness of 4 memory strategies (looking, naming, rehearsing, and categorizing) and (b) studied and recalled sets of stimuli. The order of tasks was counterbalanced within grade. Ss in all grades chose rehearsal and categorization over looking or naming. Second graders in both conditions and 4th graders who did the memory tasks first judged rehearsal and categorization as equally effective. Fourth graders who made strategy judgments first and 6th graders in both conditions significantly preferred categorization over rehearsal. On the memory task, 4th graders who judged strategy effectiveness prior to doing the memory tasks recalled more than those doing the memory task first. There was no difference due to condition for the other 2 grades. Degree of strategic awareness was related to recall only for children who made the strategy judgment prior to doing the memory tasks. Findings illustrate developmental changes in awareness of the relative benefits of categorization over rehearsal during elementary school and suggest that performance on a memory task may be affected by the degree to which appropriate metamemorial awareness is "activated." (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Three experiments investigated developmental changes in children's ability to monitor and evaluate memorization and comprehension. First and 3rd graders rated the perceived difficulty of memorization (verbatim recall) and comprehension (block-building construction) after engaging in (a) a memory strategy (rote repetition) or a comprehension strategy (pictorial clarification of unfamiliar words; Exp 1); (b) no strategy or repetition (Exp 2); and (c) no strategy or clarification (Exp 3). In Exp 1, children recognized that clarification aided construction more than recall, but not that repetition aided recall more than construction. In Exp 2, children recognized that repetition aided recall but not construction. In Exp 3, children recognized that clarification aided construction more than recall. Thus, by 1st grade, children are sensitive to some aspects of the comprehension-memory distinction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Four experiments investigated developmental changes in children's knowledge about the types of strategies that are appropriate for achieving the goals of comprehension or memorization. We assessed 1st and 3rd graders' recognition of the differential effectiveness of a memorization strategy (repetition) and a comprehension strategy (pictorial clarification of problematic words) for achieving memorization (verbatim recall of block-building instructions) or comprehension (following instructions for constructing a block building). Only 3rd graders distinguished between comprehension and memorization by consistently selecting the more effective strategy for both memorization and comprehension. Children's ability to distinguish between comprehension and memory in their strategy selections may depend, in part, on whether the context provides clear, concrete, overt, behavioral criteria for defining memorization and comprehension as distinct goals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In two studies, subjects read and rated how well they understood a poem. Beforehand, however, they had participated under hypnosis in an exercise designed to induce feelings of being uncertain about something. For half of the subjects hypnosis was made salient as a cause for the feelings; for the other half the feelings remained unexplained. The results showed that when left unexplained, the feelings of uncertainty were interpreted by subjects as indications that they did not understand the poem. When attributed to the hypnosis, however, the feelings had no effect on ratings of comprehension. In one experiment, subjects were also studied who were not susceptible to hypnosis, and who, therefore, did not feel uncertain in the first place. The results suggest that just as positive and negative affective feelings serve as information for making evaluative judgments, feelings of certainty and uncertainty serve as information for making cognitive judgments (t. e. judgments of knowing).
The distinction between conscious and unconscious memory, which is central to modern theories of cognition, has received only limited scrutiny in developmental research. One reason is a need for developmental methodologies that allow age variability in conscious and unconscious memory to be quantified. A simple paradigm (called conjoint recognition) and model are presented that quantify conscious and unconscious memory for learned materials and for the types of unlearned materials that have been found to induce false memories in children. A validation study showed that the model gave excellent accounts of the performance of 7- and 10-year-olds and that conscious and unconscious memory parameters reacted in appropriate ways to 3 manipulations (age, meaningfulness of distractors and targets, and priming).
Children's understanding of cognition increases greatly between early childhood and adolescence. This increase provides a developmental bridge between young children's understanding of mental states to adolescents' and adults' epistemological reflection. The author presents a framework for describing developmental changes in children's understanding of cognitive activities. He distinguishes 4 aspects of children's understanding of cognition: (a) knowledge of mental states, (b) knowledge of occurrence of particular activities, (c) knowledge of organization of cognitive activities, and (d) epistemological thought. He discusses phenomenological awareness of cognitive activities and social experience as influences on children's concepts of cognition.
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Students' perceptions of whether enough has been learned from text to pass a test presumably regulate their processing of textbook material. The authors examine the accuracy of these perceptions associated with initial reading in three experiments. In each study, university students read a textbook chapter and took a test on factual information contained in the reading. Subjects estimated test performance either before reading, after reading, or after testing. There were consistent, although nonsignificant, increases in accuracy of perceived readiness for examination performance (PREP) from before reading to after reading (average gain across the three experiments was 0.52 SD). There were also consistent after-reading to after-testing increases in PREP accuracy, although improvement was statistically significant in only one of the three studies (average of 0.77 SD across experiments). Only the before-reading to after-testing increase in PREP was significant in all three studies. That the first two experiments included only nonsignificant improvements in PREP during reading but significant improvements due both to reading and to testing motivated examination of the effects on PREP produced by adding adjunct questions to text. Thus, Experiment 3 included conditions in which students read text that contained inserted questions. PREP in these conditions was significantly more accurate after reading than before reading and as accurate after reading as after testing. It was clear that adjunct questions can be an important source of metacognitive information during reading. /// [French] La perception des élèves à savoir s'ils ont suffisamment appris d'un texte pour réussir un examen influence probablement leur traitement du matériel de lecture. Les auteurs ont évalué l'exactitude de cette perception à partir de trois expériences. Les sujets de niveau collégial ont estimé leur réussite soit avant la lecture, après la lecture ou après le test. On a remarqué con consistance une amélioration, bien que non significative, entre la justesse de la perception de l'aptitude à réussir un examen (désignée par PREP dans cette recherche) exprimée avant la lecture et celle exprimée après la lecture (gain moyen entre les trois expériences, SD = 0.52). Le même phénomène est observé entre l'estimation de la réussite possible effectuée après la lecture et celle effectuée après le test, bien que l'amélioration soit statistiquement significative dans un seul des trois cas (moyenne SD entre les expériences = 0.77). La comparaison de la perception (PREP) exprimée avant la lecture avec celle exprimée après le test présente la seule augmentation significative. Puisque les deux premières expériences n'ont démontré que des améliorations non significatives de PREP durant la lecture mais des améliorations significatives dues à la lecture et à l'examen, les auteurs ont également étudié les effets qu'entraîne l'ajout de questions au texte sur la PREP. Par conséquent, l'expérience 3 présentait des conditions où les élèves lisaient un texte accompagné de questions. Dans ces conditions, la PREP était beaucoup plus précise après la lecture qu'avant, et aussi précise après la lecture qu'après l'examen. A la lumière de ces résultats, les auteurs concluent que les questions complémentaires peuvent constituer une importante source d'information métacognitive pour le lecteur. /// [Spanish] Las percepciones de los estudiantes acerca de si se ha aprendido suficiente de un texto para pasar una prueba presumiblemente regulan su procesamiento de material del libro de texto. En tres experimentos los autores examinaron la exactitud de estas percepciones. Los sujetos de nivel universitario estimaron su desempeño en una prueba ya fuera antes de leer, después de leer o después de la prueba. Hubo incrementos consistentes, aunque no significativos, en exactitud de la capacidad percibida para el desempeño en un examen (PREP) de antes de leer a después de leer (el promedio del incremento en los tres experimentos fue de d. e. = 0.52). También hubo incrementos consistentes de después de la lectura a después de la prueba en exactitud PREP, aún cuando la mejora fue estadísticamente significativa solamente en uno de los tres estudios (promedio de la d. e. = 0.77 en los experimentos). Unicamente el incremento de antes de la lectura a después de la prueba en PREP fue significativo en los tres estudios. Debido a que los primeros dos experimentos encontraron solamente mejoras no significativas en PREP durante la lectura pero significativas debido a la lectura y prueba, los autores también examinaron los efectos en PREP producidos al añadir preguntas adjuntas al texto. De esta forma el experimento 3 incluyó condiciones en que los estudiantes leyeron texto que contenía preguntas insertadas. En estas condiciones PREP fue significativamente más exacto después de leer que antes de leer y tan exacto después de leer como después de la prueba. De estos resultados los autores concluyen que las preguntas adjuntas pueden ser una fuente importante de información metacognitiva durante la lectura. /// [German] Die erkenntnis von Schülern, genügend über einen Text gelernt zu haben, um eine Prüfung zu bestehen, regelt ihre Verarbeitung von Textbuchstoff. In drei Experimenten prüften die Autoren die Genauigkeit dieser Erkenntnisse. Collegegrad-Prüflinge bewerteten Prüfungsfähigkeit entweder vor oder nach dem Lesen, oder aber nach der Prüfung. Es gab stetige, obwohl unbedeutende Steigerungen in der Genauigkeit von festgestellter Bereitschaft für Prüfungsfähigkeit (PREP) von dem Vorher-Lesen bis zum Nachher-Lesen (Durchschnittssteigerung der drei Experimente insgesamt: SD = 0.52). Es gab ebenfalls stetige Steigerungen von Nachher-Lesen bis Nach-der-Prüfungung der PREP-Genauigkeit, obwohl die Verbesserung statistisch nur in einer der Studien bedeutend war (Durchschnitt SD = 0.77) der Experimente insgesamt). Lediglich die Vorher-Lesen bis Nach-der-Prüfung-Steigerung in PREP war in allen drei Studien bedeutungsvoll. Da die ersten zwei Experimente nur unbedeutende Verbesserungen von PREP fanden während des Lesens, jedoch bedeutsame Verbesserungen aufgrund von Lesen sowohl wie Prüfen, untersuchten die Autoren ebenfalls die Einwirkungen von PREP, indem Zusatzfragen dem Text hinzugefügt wurden. Daher enthielt Experiment 3 Umstände, wo Schüler Text lessen, der eingefügte Fragen enthielt. PREP war unter diesen Umständen bedeutend genauer nach dem Lesen als vor dem Lesen, und ebenso genau nach dem Lesen wie nach dem Testen. Diese Resultate lassen darauf schließen, daß Zusatzfragen eine wichtige Quelle metakognitiver Information während des Lesens darstellen.
This study was designed to assess developmental differences in the acquisition of information about strategy efficacy, information that could be gleaned from observing a peer model perform a memory task. Second-grade, seventh-grade, and college students watched a videotape of a model learning a list of paired-associate nouns via two differentially effective overt strategies, sentence elaboration (effective) and verbal repetition (ineffective). In two of three conditions, subjects also watched the model being tested for cued recall of the noun pairs (but without being able to hear the model's responses). Subjects in the instructed-to-monitor condition were told to monitor and record their own perceived performance while watching the model take the tests; subjects in the opportunity-to-monitor condition watched the model's tests, but were not instructed to monitor or record their own performance; and no-opportunity subjects did not watch the model being tested. Second graders exhibited no strategy-efficacy benefits from the vicarious test experience (i.e., from watching the model being tested). Seventh graders displayed evidence of both strategy-efficacy knowledge and effective-strategy selections in the two conditions where the vicarious test experience was provided. College students made effective-strategy selections even without the vicarious test experience, although they appeared to have gained some strategy-efficacy knowledge from it.
The memory-monitoring abilities of 4- and 5-year-olds were investigated using a recall-failure, judgment, recognition sequence involving personal names. Children were shown color photographs of other children and adults, varying in familiarity, and asked initially to recall their names. Feeling-of-knowing judgments and judgments about whether the child had seen the person were obtained in all cases where naming failed. Both types of judgment were found to predict subsequent recognition performance, indicating accurate memory monitoring. Signal detection analyses revealed sensitivity and lack of bias in the monitoring activities of both age groups. These results demonstrated that preschoolers possess basic monitoring abilities that are important for the development of subsequent skills such as the allocation of mnemonic effort.
Children 3½ and 5 years of age were tested for their intuitive knowledege of the psychological fact that 1 mental event may trigger or cue another related mental event (called the concept of cognitive cueing). A child who had acquired this commonplace but important concept should recognize that a visible depicted object would be a good cue or marker for the location of a hidden depicted object if the 2 were associatively related in the searcher's experience, but would not be if the 2 were unrelated. Data from several location-marking tasks suggested that many of the 3½-year-olds had not developed more than a very rudimentary level of understanding of the concept and that many of the 5-year-olds may have acquired only an intermediate level, "behavioral-cueing" precursor of it. There is reason to believe that it may emerge around the beginning of middle childhood.
This study examined the development of an appreciation of logical necessity. Participants were 100 children from three age groups (7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds), each of whom responded to tasks drawn from four categories: logically necessary truths, physical laws, social conventions, and arbitrary facts. Questions following each task were intended to tap criteria traditionally ascribed to necessary truths, including universality, unchangeability, and the unimaginability of any alternative. Even the 7-year-olds showed some appreciation of the necessity of necessary truths, generally claiming that such outcomes hold true everywhere and will never change. Developmental changes were of two main sorts. Older children were more successful than younger children at differentiating the various forms of knowledge. Older children also showed greater appreciation of the literal unimaginability of the violation of a logical truth.
Adults’ and kindergarten through fourth-grade children’s evaluations and explanations of inductive inferences, deductive inferences, and guesses were assessed. Beginning in kindergarten, participants rated deductions as more certain than weak inductions or guesses. Beginning in third grade, deductions were rated as more certain than strong inductions. Adults and fourth-grade children differentiated strong inductions, weak inductions, and informed guesses from pure guesses. Adults’ and fourth-grade children’s evaluations of inferences were influenced by the sample of evidence provided and by population base-rate information. By third grade, participants also gave different types of explanations for their deductions and inductions. These results are discussed in relation to children’s concepts of cognitive processes, logical reasoning, and epistemological development.
Developments in children's participation in causal discourse with their mothers and older siblings were studied in the naturally occurring conversations of 50 second-born children observed at home at 33 and 40 months. There were marked increases in discourse about causality, and changes in content and in the social context in which children discussed cause, with an increase in causal talk about inner states and social practices. At 33 months children talked about cause chiefly in attempts to get their own needs met, at 40 months chiefly in reflective discussion. Patterns over time in the discourse measures, and correlations between these measures at 33 months and the children's success on an assessment of understanding of the causes of emotions at 40 months highlighted the continuity in child differences, and the importance of particular pragmatic contexts, including disputes, within which discourse about causality takes place.
Two experiments investigated children's understanding that mistaken beliefs may arise through misinterpretation of ambiguous information. In Expt 1, 4- and 5-yearolds accurately attributed false beliefs based on direct perception, but did not attribute false beliefs based on inferential or interpretive processes. Experiment 2 compared children's ability to predict another person's interpretation with children's ability to explain another person's interpretation after the fact. Although 4-year-olds often provided valid explanations, 7-year-olds were more likely than 4-year-olds to refer to another person's previous experiences to explain the person's interpretation. References to previous experiences were positively correlated with the ability to predict another person's interpretation. These results support the view that understanding false belief and understanding interpretive activity are distinct conceptual acquisitions.
2 studies investigated young children's understanding that as the retention interval increases, so do the chances that one will forget. In Study 1 (24 3-year-olds and 24 4-year-olds), 4-year-olds but not 3-year-olds understood that of 2 characters who simultaneously saw an object, the character who waited longer before attempting to find it would not remember where it was. In study 2 (24 3-year-olds and 24 4-year-olds), 4-year-olds but not 3-year-olds understood that of 2 objects seen by a character, the object that was seen a “long long time ago” would be forgotten and the object seen “a little while ago” would be remembered. The findings are discussed in relation to research on young children's understanding of the acquisition, retention, and retrieval of knowledge over time.
This study aimed at delimiting possible relations of feeling of difficulty (FOD) with control ideas pertaining to a particular task. Participants were 274 students of 7th, 8th, and 9th grade. They were tested with two mathematical tasks; they were also asked to give ratings of the feeling of difficulty at 4 phases: In advance of problem solving, during planning of the solution, after solution production, and an overall estimation. Participants also gave ratings for control ideas such as need to know the rule, to do the computations right, to have practice, to use one's thinking and to have help from others. Path analysis and ANOVAs were used for the identification of the relations and differentiations of ratings in the four phases of problem solving. Results indicated that FOD varied from phas to phase and influenced ideas related to control. Feeling of difficulty in the main was only indirectly related to performance via control ideas.
5 experiments investigated children's understanding that expectations based on prior experience may influence a person's interpretation of ambiguous visual information. In Experiment 1, 4- and 5-year-olds were asked to infer a puppet's interpretation of a small, ambiguous portion of a line drawing after the puppet had been led to have an erroneous expectation about the drawing's identity. Children of both ages failed to ascribe to the puppet an interpretation consistent with the puppet's expectation. Instead, children attributed complete knowledge of the drawing to the puppet. In Experiment 2, the task was modified to reduce memory demands, but 4- and 5-year-olds continued to overlook the puppet's prior expectations when asked to infer the puppet's interpretation of an ambiguous scene. 6-year-olds responded correctly. In Experiment 3, 4- and 5-year-olds correctly reported that an observer who saw a restricted view would not know what was in the drawing, but children did not realize that the observer's interpretation might be mistaken. Experiments 4 and 5 explored the possibility that children's errors reflect difficulty inhibiting their own knowledge when responding. The results are taken as evidence that understanding of interpretation begins at approximately age 6 years.
At what age and in what ways do children distinguish deductive and inductive problems? In Experiment 1, students from kindergarten and from Grades 2, 4, and 6 were presented with deductive or inductive inference problems and asked to draw an inference and rate their confidence. By 4th grade, confidence ratings for deductive problems were higher than those for inductive problems, and responses were faster for deductive than for inductive items. In Experiment 2, students from Grades 2, 3, 4, and 5 responded to the same problems used in Experiment 1 but were asked to provide explanations for their responses. Again, confidence was higher with deductive than with inductive problems, and latency to respond was faster for deductive than for inductive items. Further, explanations differed as a function of the type of problem. These findings help fill in gaps in the emerging picture of the development of children's reasoning skills.
Two studies demonstrated that preschool children have little knowledge and awareness of inner speech. Study 1 showed that, in contrast to 6- to 7-year-olds and adults, 4-year-olds usually did not infer that a person silently engaged in such intrinsically verbal mental activities as reading, counting, or recalling items from a shopping list was saying things to herself. They also tended to deny that covert speech is a possible human activity. Study 2 demonstrated that 4- and 5-year-olds are much poorer than adults at detecting their own inner speech. Children seem to acquire this sort of knowledge and awareness during the early school years, perhaps through experiencing their own inner speech while reading, writing, adding, and subtracting.
How children understand the mental state of pretense has recently become an active area of inquiry, with some research suggesting that young children do not understand that pretending is based on mentally representing some alternate state of affairs. Because intention is thought to be understood earlier than mental representation generally, these experiments tested whether children understand pretense intentions at an earlier age than they understand pretense mental representations. Children were told about a character's intentions and conflicting actions, and were asked about the character's pretense. Across 5 experiments, children did not demonstrate appreciation that intention is crucial to pretense. Various methodological factors that might have compromised the results were examined, but to no effect.
The purpose of this study was to explore the development of children's conceptual understanding of attention by focusing on their awareness of various subtypes of attention. Adults, fifth graders (mean age = 11.16 years), and third graders (9.16 years) participated in a Similarity Judgment task in which they rated the similarity of pairs of cognitive scenarios involving various attentional processes. These similarity judgments were submitted to an extended similarity tree analysis (EXTREE; J. E. Corter & A. Tversky, 1986) and the interpretations of the clusters and features that emerged were confirmed by participants in an Attribute Rating task. Three changes were found with increasing age: (1) Less emphasis was placed on the surface features of the scenarios, (2) more attentional subtypes were identified, and (3) more emphasis was placed on the role of effort in attention. We conclude that during elementary school and beyond children came to understand that intentional, effortful cognitive processes can mediate between the external world and our conscious experiences of it.