Interactions Among Aptitudes, Strategies, and Knowledge in Cognitive Performance

324 Pages·1990·7.41 MB·English

by  Josef Perner (auth.)

Interactions Among Aptitudes, Strategies, and
Knowledge in Cognitive Performance
Wolfgang Schneider Franz E. Weinert
Editors
Interactions Among Aptitudes,
Strategies, and Knowledge in
Cognitive Performance
With 46 Illustrations
Springer-Verlag
New York Berlin Heidelberg
London Paris Tokyo Hong Kong
Wolfgang Schneider
Franz E. Weinert
Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research
Munich, FRG
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Interactions among aptitudes, strategies, and knowledge in cognitive
performance/W. Schneider, F.E. Weinert, editors.
p. cm.
Papers presented at a conference held at the Max-Planck-Institut
fiir Psychologische Forschung, Munich, July 6-8, 1988.
Includes bibliographies and index.
1. Cognition in children-Congresses. 2. Ability in children
Congresses. 3. Problem solving in children-Congresses..
4. Cognition-Congresses. 5. Ability-Congresses. 6. Problem
solving-Congresses. I. Schneider, Wolfgang, 1950-
II. Weinert, Franz E., 1930- III. Max-Planck-Institut fiir
Psychologische Forschung.
BF723.C5I563 1989
155.4'13-dc20 89-35540
Printed on acid-free paper.
© 1990 by Springer-Verlag New York Inc.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990
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ISBN-13: 978-1-4612-7942-6 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4612-3268-1
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Preface
During the past two decades, a renewed interest in children's cognitive devel
opment has stimulated numerous research activities that have been summarized
in hundreds of books. In our view, the field of memory development provides
a particularly nice example of the progress that has been made so far. Since
John Flavell's landmark symposium on "What Is Memory Development the
Development of?" in 1971, the question of what develops has been addressed
in different ways, yielding a rather complex pattern of findings. A closer look
at current research outcomes reveals that ways of describing and explaining de
velopmental changes in memory performance have changed considerably during
the past 20 years. That is, while individual differences in the use of cognitive
strategies were conceived of as the most important predictors of individual dif
ferences in memory performance in the 1970s, the crucial role of knowledge
has been demonstrated in research conducted in the 1980s. More recent studies
have repeatedly emphasized that neither changes in strategies nor knowledge
alone is sufficient to explain general patterns of memory development: Here
the claim is that strategies ahd different forms of knowledge (e.g., world knowl
edge, domain knowledge, or metacognitive knowledge) interact in rather com
plex ways to achieve successful memory performance.
We believe that this claim can be generalized to different fields dealing with
intelligent information processing. While memory development was chosen as
an example because it happens to be our domain of interest, similar interactions
among strategies and knowledge may determine performance in many problem
solving activities. Therefore, we decided to assemble a group of researchers
active in different fields of cognitive development so that their views on cur
rent trends and the issues described above could be assessed and debated. When
we invited participants for a conference on interactions among aptitudes, strate
gies, and knowledge in cognitive performance, we asked them to explicitly
consider the issue as it applied to their areas of greatest current interest. Aptitude
issues were added because aspects of individual differences in cognitive devel
opment seem to attract more attention in recent research contributions than they
did a few years ago.
The conference was held at the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Re-
vi Preface
search in Munich, West Germany, on July 6 to 8, 1988. The conference was
structured as a working meeting, giving sufficient time for group discussion
following each paper. All papers presented during one session and belonging to
the same section were additionally commented on by a discussant. With the ex
ception of the final chapter, all chapters of this book are a direct result of
these 3 days of presentation, intensive discussion, and debate representing re
vised versions of the papers given at the conference.
We have arranged the chapters within the book into five sections: early cog
nitive development; thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving; interactive roles
of strategies and the knowledge base in memory performance; impacts of meta
cognitive knowledge and strategies on cognitive performance; and interactions
among aptitudes, strategies, and knowledge in (exceptional) cognitive perfor
mance. The first section focuses on possible interrelationships between knowl
edge and strategies in young children. In Chapter 1, Pemer argues that children's
experiential awareness, that is, their understanding thalt informational access
leads to knowledge, seems closely related to improvements in episodic memory.
Based on a distinction between episodic and semantic access to stored informa
tion, Pemer predicts that the development of experiential awareness (around
4 years of age) should lead to great improvements in free recall. The interesting
conclusion is that early signs of metacognitive knowledge (i.e., experiential
awareness) may be essential for memory development.
In Chapter 2, Sodian examines the relationships between young children's
early conceptualizations of the mental domain (i.e., their "theory of mind") and
the use of cognitive strategies. In her view, "theory changes" in children's un
derstanding of sources of information provide the conceptual base for develop
mental changes in cognitive strategy use. Sodian presents interesting empirical
evidence from the fields of referential communication and memory develop
ment supporting the position that young children's cognitive strategy use is
constrained by their "theory" of the origins of knowledge and belief.
Bullock discusses the two chapters on early cognitive development in Chap
ter 3. One of her aims is to construct a developmental sequence from the Pemer
and Sodian papers, claiming that the developmental changes described by
Sodian (i.e., the shift from empiricist to constructivist view of the mind) take
place after experiential awareness is effective in young children. In addition,
Bullock discusses the issue of generalizability across cognitive domains, an
issue that still needs to be addressed more carefully in future research.
The next section of the book concerns the interplay of aptitudes, strategies,
and knowledge in the development of thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving.
In the first chapter of this section, Chapter 4, Ceci and Nightingale emphasize
the role of context (defined, very broadly, to include knowledge, among other
things) on cognitive development. In their view, context plays a "crystallizing"
role in cognition, leading to the recruitment of specific resources to try to solve
a given problem. Ceci and Nightingale conceive of cognitive development as a
bidirectional process: Increasingly elaborated knowledge structures facilitate
the use of microlevel processes such as encoding a retrieval, which in tum un-
Preface Vll
derpin more efficient macrolevel behaviors like thinking and reasoning. Ceci
and Nightingale also treat the problem of individual differences, assuming that
besides differences in central nervous system efficiency differences in knowl
edge structure playa major role.
In Chapter 5, Hagendorf examines the role of selected determinants or con
traints of cognitive development. In his view, cognitive strategies and their
metacognitive correlates cannot be seen independently from knowledge-bound
processes. Rather, it is the interaction of domain knowledge and specific strate
gies that leads to effective problem-solving. Hagendorf assures that competent
cognitive performance is characterized by easy and fast access to task-relevant
information, thus minimizing the problem of limited information-processing
capacities.
In Chapter 6, Kluwe presents an overview of his empirical research dealing
with problem-solving behavior and its relation to metacognitive knowledge (i.e.,
conscious, verbalizable access to knowledge). As a major result, it can be shown
that children of all age groups (4 to 7 years of age) included in the study are
able to react appropriately to changes in task requirements (although older and
younger children differ as to the quality of problem-solving activities). Kluwe
demonstrates, however, that young children's appropriate responses in the prob
lem-solving task may not be related to metacognitive, statable knowledge, as
indicated by their low levels of understanding of task requirements in a meta
cognitive interview. It is only for the older children of the sample that appro
priate responses in the problem-solving task are accompanied by high levels of
understanding.
In Chapter 7, Siegler shows how specific knowledge influences choices among
strategies, how strategy choices in turn influence the construction of specific
knowledge, and how individual differences in both initial content knowledge
and cognitive style influence both choices among strategies and acquisition of
further content knowledge. Siegler's empirical research on children's mental
arithmetic and rehearsal strategies documents that strategy use is not a group
level phenomenon: Among other proves, children's self-reports seem suited to
validate the new insight that individual children indeed choose among competing
strategies when working on the same class of problems. As to the question of
how children are able to make such adaptive strategy choices, Siegler summa
rizes findings based on a computer simulation model. From these results, it ap
pears that transitions in strategy use over time are not so much based on rational
calculations but produced by rather simple associative learning mechanisms.
In his discussion of the four chapters on thinking, reasoning, and problem
solving, Strube notes that neither architectural limits of the information-process
ing system nor aspects of metacognitive knowledge seem to playa major role.
Undoubtedly, most papers focus on the interplay of strategies and domain
specific knowledge. In Strube's view, the authors do differ markedly in what
they conceive of as components of a "strategy," an issue that has been dis
cussed controversially for some time now. Strube emphasizes that in both Ceci
and Nightingale's and Siegler's chapters the concept of cognitive style is Tecon-
VIti Preface
structed from an information-processing point of view, thus overcoming the
limitations of the trait concept of cognitive style that was fairly dominant in
the 1970s.
The third section focuses on interactions between knowledge and strategies
in memory development, a research area that has expanded considerably during
the last few years. In Chapter 9, Muir-Broaddus and Bjorklund explore the fit
between views of memory development and data concerning individual differ
ences. As to memory development, Muir-Broaddus and Bjorklund basically
assume that age-related changes in children's free recall and organizational
strategies are primarily due to age-related differences in content knowledge.
They provide ample empirical evidence showing that the knowledge base not
only affects strategy use but also has nonstrategic effect~, on memory perfor
mance. Muir-Broaddus and Bjorklund further demonstrate that memory differ
ences between children with different learning abilities (e.g., learning disabled
versus nondisabled children, gifted versus nongifted children) cannot be ex
plained by differences in strategies or general intellectual functioning alone, but
are mainly due to individual differences in the knowledge base.
In Chapter 10, Rabinowitz and McAuley examine the respective roles of
conceptual knowledge and strategies in memory performance. In their review
of information-processing models, conceptualizations that conceive of the mind
as computer are compared with connectionist models that use the metaphor
of mind as brain. Rabinowitz and McAuley argue that both models do not
seem able to capture adequately the dynamic nature of conceptual knowledge
and the control of processing afforded by strategies. Their suggestion is that a
hybrid model of information-processing is needed to understand conceptual and
strategic processing. In the second part of the chapter, a simulation study assess
ing the implications for positing an active processing component within the
knowledge structures is described. Results indicate a symbiotic relationship be
tween strategies and the development of knowledge structures.
In Chapter 11, van der Meer examines the role of conceptual structures of
knowledge in memory performance. Van der Meer assumes that the flexibility
of conceptual knowledge structures is determined by their vertical and horizontal
dynamics. While vertical dynamics operate through generallization principles or
mechanisms generating superordinate/subordinate concepts, horizontal dynamics
of knowledge are based on the formation of action-related sequences of events.
Van der Meer discusses the horizontal dynamics of knowledge structures in more
detail, presenting empirical research that aimed at identifying general strategies
underlying the horizontal dynamics of conceptual knowledge structures. She
concludes from this research that both invariants and developmental changes
concerning the horizontal dynamics of knowledge structures can be observed,
and that age- and ability-related changes in strategy use: are closely linked to
the development of conceptual knowledge structures.
Ornstein, in his discussion of the three chapters, emphasizes that our under
standing of how knowledge "works" is severely limited. We do not know much
about how children's knowledge is organized, how it changes with age, and
Preface ix
how it affects memory performance (e.g., how to differentiate between knowl
edge effects and strategy effects). In Ornstein's view, these questions can serve
as a framework to evaluate the contributions of the authors. As a major result
of his evaluative approach, Ornstein concludes that the authors succeeded in the
difficult task of taking us to new levels of understanding. Although many issues
are yet to be resolved, the three chapters contribute substantially for our think
ing about knowledge-strategy relationships in that they go far beyond the stage
of simple demonstrations of knowledge-base effects.
The next section of the book concerns the effects of metacognitive knowledge
and strategies on cognitive performance. In Chapter 13, Borkowski and Turner
examine the role of procedural metacognitive knowledge, that is, executive
functioning or self-regulation, on strategy use and cognitive performance. The
major argument developed in this chapter is that selected components of meta
cognition facilitate and augment strategy deployment across domains, and thus
constitute the essence of general problem-solving skills. Borkowski and Turner
assume that self-regulatory processes are crucial for maintenance and transfer
of strategies, giving metacognition its transsituational applicability. The model
of metacognition presented by Borkowski and Turner further emphasizes the
important role of motivational correlates of metacognition like self-esteem or
attributional beliefs. It is assumed that both executive processes and attributional
beliefs are particularly important for producing problem-solving skills.
Kurtz, in Chapter 14, broadens the perspective by illustrating ways in which
culture mediates children's cognitive and metacognitive development. In the first
part of the chapter, Kurtz reviews current metacognitive theory, showing possi
ble interfaces among cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational factors. The
second part examines environmental influences on cognitive development. Kurtz
emphasizes long-term effects of parenting styles on children's cognitive devel
opment and also provides evidence for the important role of teachers for children's
emerging metacognitive awareness. Results of cross-cultural research reported
in the last part of Kurtz's chapter provide further evidence for the necessity of
studying metacognition as part of a complex system, including cognitive and
motivational variables.
In Chapter 15, Pressley, Wood, and Woloshyn analyze the effects of elabo
rative interrogation (i.e., asking why-questions) on the acquisition of factual
knowledge. Pressley et al. review empirical research showing that children and
adults are more likely to use prior knowledge in new situations if they have
been trained to activate and apply what they know, and that elaborative interro
gation can be successfully used to stimulate elaborative processing. In view of
their encouraging results, Pressley et al. emphasize the need for more research
on self-regulated elaborative interrogation, which is seen as a robust and effi
cient method of promoting acquisition of factual knowledge.
Carr discusses the three preceding chapters in Chapter 16. In her view, the
chapters presented in this section document a recent shift by developmental
psychologists from a strictly cognitive, unicomponential approach to intellectual
development toward an approach induding multiple, often noncognitive com-
x Preface
ponents like self-esteem and attributional beliefs. Carr additionally emphasizes
the necessity of exploring the changing roles of various cognitive and motiva
tional factors across the life span, thus voting for a life-span developmental
approach.
The fifth and final section of the book deals with interactions among aptitudes,
strategies, and knowledge in cognitive performance. In Chapter 17, Schneider,
Korkel, and Weinert focus on research exploring the impact of domain-specific
knowledge on text processing in highly articulated domains. The major issues
addressed in this chapter concern (1) developmental differences as to how ex
perts' knowledge is represented, (2) the role of metacognition in explaining per
formance differences between experts and novices, and (3) the relevance of
general aptitudes for experts' performance on domain-related cognitive process
ing tasks. Schneider et al. conclude from their studies on soccer expertise that
individual differences in metacognitive knowledge contribute to soccer experts'
performance differences. On the other hand, their findings show that overall
low aptitude can be compensated by domain-specific expertise.
In Chapter 18, Staszewski gives an impressive report on the progress being
made in understanding the cognitive structures and processes underlying human
expertise. As Staszewski sees it, any adequate theory of expert performance
should describe expert knowledge in terms of its content, organization, and
representation, and then describe how an expert operates upon his or her knowl
edge to achieve exceptionally high levels of performance. This is exactly what
Staszewski does in his chapter, describing the effects of an extensive training
program that eventually enabled a subject with normal abilities and the appro
priate knowledge base to become an exceptionally skilled mnemonist. Fine
grained analyses of the subject's encoding and retrieval activities reveal that his
exceptional memory skill results from the interaction of practice, knowledge,
and effective strategies.
In the final chapter of the book, Schneider and Weinert discuss what they
think are the persistent problems and the major achievements in the area. In an
attempt to integrate the issues raised in the various chapters, Schneider and
Weinert note that conceptualization problems due to the fuzziness of constructs
still await resolution. Schneider and Weinert emphasize, however, that the con
tributions to this volume represent important achievements in the field, despite
the problems of conceptualization. In particular, major progress concerns the
development of a theoretical framework suited to model interactions among ap
titudes, knowledge components, and cognitive strategies. In Schneider's and
Weinert's view, future research should specifically address the issue of gener
alizability across domains, an issue discussed controversially in this volume.
Munich, West Germany WOLFGANG SCHNEIDER
FRANZ E. WEINERT
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank a number of people for their work on the symposium
and their assistance in preparing this book. We are indebted to Gabi Golling,
Mariele Kremling, Heidi Schulze, and Simone Stief for their help in planning
the meeting and for taking care of arrangements during the symposium itself.
Heidi Schulze further typed or retyped a number of the final chapters in the
book and did it extremely well. Merry Bullock, Ron Kinney, Elizabeth Kulcsar,
Mike Pressley, and Bob Siegler took over the difficult job of editing those chap
ters written by German contributors. We owe them a considerable debt of grati
tude.
Finally, we would like to thank Anik de Ribaupierre and Marion Perlmutter
who served as discussants at the conference but for various reasons were unable
to contribute to this book. We found their comments to be extremely valuable,
stimulating some of the discussion provided in the last chapter of this book.