The research reported here investigated the nature of young children's understanding of a novel symbol-a scale model. Children witnessed the hiding of a small toy in a scale model of a room and were then required to search for an analogous larger toy that had been surreptitiously hidden in the actual room. At issue was whether children succeed by attending to the target location (object strategy), to the spatial location of the target location (spatial strategy), or to both types of information. It has been suggested that at three years of age (the age at which children first succeed on the task) children succeed by recognizing the correspondence between analogous objects in the two spaces (Bence & Presson, 1997; Blades & Cooke, 1994; Perner, 1991; Lillard, 1993) but that an understanding of the model as a whole as a representation of the room necessitates also attending to the spatial relations between the objects (Perner, 1991; Lillard, 1993). In five Experiments, children participated in versions of the model task that varied in the type of information (object and/or spatial) available to solve the task. The results revealed that although, in general, children rely primarily on the identity of the individual objects to find the hidden toy, the spatial relations between the objects may also influence task success. Furthermore, there was strong evidence of individual differences in children's strategies which appeared to be linked to sex, with girls attending primarily to the identity of the objects and boys demonstrating a fledgling ability to approach the model spatially. Some children also appeared to label the target object but the labeling strategy could not account for girls' tendency to attend to the objects more than boys. It is suggested that characterizations of an abrupt shift between three and four years of age in the ability to interpret the model as a whole as a representation of the room may be misleading. There may be multiple developmental routes to the gradual acquisition of an explicit understanding of a scale model as a symbol for the space it is intended to represent.

This study examined the influence of age, expertise, and task difficulty on children's patterns of collaboration. Six- and eight-year-old children were individually pretested for ability to copy a Lego model and then paired with each other and asked to copy two more models. The design was a 3 (dyad skill level: novice, expert, or mixed) X 2 (age: six or eight) X 2 (task difficulty: moderate or complex) factorial. Results indicated that cooperation increased with age and expertise and decreased with task difficulty. However, expertise had a greater influence on younger than older children's interaction styles. It is argued that with age, social skills may become as important as expertise in determining styles of collaboration. The issue is raised of whether cooperation, domination, and independence represent developmental sequences (i.e., independence precedes cooperation) or whether they represent personal styles of interaction. Finally, it is suggested that an important goal for future research is to assess the relationship between patterns of collaboration and learning.

The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of anxiety on real life problem solving performance of gifted children. The study was carried out in Israel, a country in which the necessity of solving real life problems under conditions of anxiety is a real concern. 142 gifted and nongifted subjects from 4th, 5th and 6th grades participated in the study. Trait and State Anxiety Inventories for Children (Spielberger, 1973), and a Real Life Problem Solving Situation Set (RLPSSS), were used to assess the subjects' Trait anxiety, State anxiety and real life problem solving performance respectively. The subjects in each class were divided into two matched groups based on their Trait Anxiety scores, the subjects gender and their scholastic achievements. One of them was randomly assigned to be the treatment group and the other the nontreatment group. The "treatment" consisted of deliberate induction of anxiety via a combination of elements that are known to elicit anxiety in school children. Matched t-tests on anxiety scores, before and after treatment, indicated that the treatment was effective in both populations, the gifted and the nongifted. Ethical issues were taken into consideration. Analysis of RLPSSS indicated that: (1) gifted children performed significantly better than their nongifted counterparts under conditions of treatment as well as under condition of non-treatment; (2) the performance of all the groups who experienced anxiety, was lower than that of their matched groups who performed under their natural setting conditions; (3) no interaction was found between giftedness and anxiety; (4) under conditions of anxiety gifted girls appeared to perform slightly better than gifted boys. The implications from this study concern the attitude toward anxiety which should be dealt with as part of life, rather than as a pathological feature. It is suggested to consider the introduction of anxiety scales into test batteries used for the identification of gifted children and that special programs for the gifted make provisions for providing the gifted students with the necessary skills to cope with life problems under all kinds of anxiety circumstances. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

A study was conducted with 76 grade seven students to determine the interaction between conceptual tempo (defined as reflectivity versus impulsivity) and three levels of instruction (no strategy instruction, strategy instruction fed forward, and strategy instruction in a feedback format) on a computer generated transformation problem (a maze). As has been found previously, reflectives have an advantage over impulsives in problem solving performance. Performance was based on several criteria, including speed and accuracy of a first attempt at the problem, speed and accuracy in a direct repeat of the problem and speed and accuracy in a related problem where generalizable skills could have been transferred. In all cases, different instructional presentations had no effect if the total population was considered, but some strong interactions were found between instruction and conceptual tempo. This led to a conclusion that aptitude-treatment interactions should be considered in problem-solving research. Some exploratory observations regarding other aspects of individual characteristics, such, as gender differences in computer anxiety and differences in cognitive processing of problems for the different conceptual tempos are also discussed. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

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Recent research suggests that children's ability to solve interpersonal problems is related to their social adjustment. As children are continually confronted with personal and interpersonal problems which they must solve in order to maintain positive peer relations, the study and promotion of effective problem solving skills is of great importance. The aim of the present study was to assess children's responses to hypothetical problem situations as well as to assess their overt behavioral responses in a simulated problem situation. Children were classified as socially effective (well-liked) and socially ineffective (withdrawn and aggressive) on the basis of peer and teacher ratings and nominations. Children then responded to six hypothetical stories describing an interpersonal problem (three involving a peer conflict and three involving the initiation of an interaction with a peer) and participated in two simulated real-life behavioral problem situations which mirrored two of the hypothetical stories. The results suggest some correspondence between hypothetical and behavioral indices of social problem solving skill. Withdrawn males generated fewer alternatives to both hypothetical and behavioral situations, and offered more non-confrontative intention statements to peer initiation stories than did other children. In contrast, aggressive males were found to differ from other children in the proportion of aggressive intention statements offered and in the proportion of aggressive acts produced in the peer conflict situation. Suggestions for future modifications and replications of the present research are made and implications for designing intervention programs are offered.