Related Experiment Videos
What children do in spite of what they know
Science (New York, N.Y.)
|November 22, 1968
Insights
Young children possess fundamental cognitive abilities but use them inefficiently. Older children employ cognitive heuristics, leading to errors in critical problem-solving tasks.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Development
- Developmental Psychology
- Child Psychology
Background:
- Children's cognitive abilities develop over time.
- Cognitive heuristics are mental shortcuts used in decision-making.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the inefficient utilization of basic cognitive capacities in young children.
- To examine how cognitive heuristics influence problem-solving performance in older children.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of existing research on cognitive development.
- Review of studies examining heuristic use in children's problem-solving.
Main Results:
- Young children demonstrate foundational cognitive skills but lack efficient application.
- Older children's reliance on cognitive heuristics, while often useful, can impair performance on complex problems.
Conclusions:
- Inefficient use of cognitive capacities is a developmental characteristic of young children.
- The development of cognitive heuristics in older children presents a trade-off between efficiency and accuracy in critical thinking.
Abstract:
New studies support the hypothesis that young children have basic cognitive capacities but utilize them inefficiently; older children aid these capacities with generally valid cognitive heuristics which produce poor performance on critical problems.