Information Processing in Children. The Seventh of an Annual Series of Symposia in the Area of Cognition Under the Sponsorship of Carnegie-Mellon University

196 Pages·1972·13.136 MB·English

by  Sylvia Farnham-Diggory

CONTRIBUTORS
GUY CELLÉRIER
S. FARNHAM-DIGGORY
JACQUELINE J. GOODNOW
JOHN WILLIAM HAGEN
JOHN R. HAYES
BARBEL INHELDER
DAVID KLAHR
ALLEN NEWELL
ROBERT H. POLLACK
H. A. SIMON
J. G. WALLACE
Information Processing
in Children
The Seventh of an Annual Series of Symposia
in the Area of Cognition under the
Sponsorship of Carnegie-Mellon University
EDITED BY
SYLVIA FARNHAM-DIGGORY
Carnegie-Mellon University
ACADEMICPRESS New York and London 1972
COPYRIGHT © 1972, BY ACADEMIC PRESS, INC.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 73-187241
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
IN MEMORY
OF
WALTER VANDYKE BINGHAM
AND
MILLICENT TODD BINGHAM
It is . . . impossible to infer from the nature which a
thing possesses after having passed through all stages
of its development, what the condition of the thing
has been in the moment when this process
commenced. ... If you make this mistake, and
attempt to prove the nature of a thing in potential
existence by its properties when actually existing,
you will fall into great confusions.
MOSES MAIMONIDES
Guide for the Perplexed, ca. 1185 A.D.
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Numbers in parentheses indicate the pages on which the authors' contributions begin.
GUY CELLÉRIER (115), University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
S. FARNHAM-DIGGORY (43), Department of Psychology, Carnegie-Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
JACQUELINE J. GOODNOW (83), Department of Psychology, The George
Washington University, Washington, D.C.
JOHN WILLIAM HAGEN (65), Department of Psychology, University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
JOHN R. HAYES (175), Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
BÄRBEL INHELDER (103), University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
DAVID KLAHR (143, 183), Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania
ALLEN NEWELL (125), Department of Psychology, Carnegie-Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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xiv List of Contributors
ROBERT H. POLLACK (25), Department of Psychology, University of Georgia,
Athens, Georgia
H. A. SIMON (3), Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
J. G. WALLACE (143, 183), School of Education, University of Warwick,
Coventry, Warwickshire, England
PREFACE
The Carnegie-Mellon annual cognition symposia began in 1965 with a
distinguished set of papers on problem-solving in adults (Kleinmuntz, 1966).
Last year, the conference focused on problem-solving in primates (Jarrard,
1971). This year it would seem inevitable for children to enter upon the scene,
and assume their rightful role as carriers of the continuous functions that we see
in rudimentary form in primates, and fully flowered in human adults.
This view of children characterizes the developmental psychology of the
1960's and 1970's, in contrast to the child psychology of the 1940's and 1950's.
Developmental psychologists no longer study children's memories or children's
perceptions (for example) as ends in themselves (Carmichael, 1954). We study
the growth of memory systems, or the growth of perceptual systems, in our
species. The unification of the larger body of adult psychological science, with
the special technologies necessary to the study of growth functions, is now
producing an explosion of research which is surely among the most exciting of
our century (Müssen, 1970).
The coming together of information-processing psychology and developmental
psychology in this volume is especially important. From the developmentalist's
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XVI Preface
standpoint, the information-processing approach offers a methodology for
precisely specifying the changes in organismic states and systems that are the
heart of developmental science. For the information-processing theorist,
developmental research provides needed data on the history of adult forms of
thought. As one information-processing conferee remarked, following the
conference, "If you people are right, then adults are just big kids, using systems
and strategies that they've been practicing and modifying for a long time."
The papers in the volume were solicited and organized with these two poles in
mind: (1) a display of some of the developmental data that will be necessary to a
compleat theory of the human information processor; and (2) a display of
current information-processing technologies, useful in the simulation of
developmental functions. Parts II and IV of this volume represent these poles.
Part III, including papers by Goodnow, Inhelder, Cellérier, and Newell,
represents the important intermediary stage of information or intuitive
theorizing, so necessary to the development of psychologically valid computer
models.
Part I, Simon's overview, alerts the reader to key aspects of forthcoming
papers, and provides us with an expert model of how-to-think about
developmental processes in information-processing terms.
Part V, Hayes' discussion, leaves us with a sobering conclusion: the data we
gather must be some function of the child's model of the experimental situation.
Until we understand that model fully, we may never understand our data at all.
The wedding of information-processing psychology and developmental
psychology may begin and end right there.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Gratitude is expressed to H. A. Simon, Russell Revlis, and Richard Young for
their help with editorial problems. Thanks are also due Allen and Rosalynn
Pinkus for special assistance during the final stages of manuscript preparation.
And finally, we are all deeply grateful to Betty Boal, who expertly guided the
entire symposium process.
The costs of the 1971 Symposium were borne in part by the Walter VanDyke
Bingham Memorial Lecture Fund and in part by Carnegie-Mellon University.
Editorial preparation of the book was supported by Public Health Service
Research Grant MH-07722 from the National Institute of Mental Health.
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