Children Solving Problems (Paperback, New)

A one-year-old attempting to build a tower of blocks may bring the pile crashing down, yet her five-year-old sister accomplishes this task with ease. Why do young children have difficulty with problems that present no real challenge to older children? How do problem-solving skills develop? In Children Solving Problems, Stephanie Thornton surveys recent research from a broad range of perspectives in order to explore this important question. What Thornton finds may come as a surprise: successful problem-solving depends less on how smart we are-or, as the pioneering psychologist Jean Piaget claimed, how advanced our skill in logical reasoning is-and more on the factual knowledge we acquire as we learn and interpret cues from the world around us. Problem-solving skills evolve through experience and dynamic interaction with a problem. But equally important-as the Russian psychologist L. S. Vygotsky proposed-is social interaction. Successful problem-solving is a social process. Sharing problem-solving tasks-with skilled adults and with other children-is vital to a child's growth in expertise and confidence. In problem-solving, confidence can be more important than skill. In a real sense, problem-solving lies at the heart of what we mean by intelligence. The ability to identify a goal, to work out how to achieve it, and to carry out that plan is the essence of every intelligent activity. Could it be, Thornton suggests, that problem-solving processes provide the fundamental machinery for cognitive development? In Children Solving Problems she synthesizes the dramatic insights and findings of post-Piagetian research and sets the agenda for the next stage in understanding the varied phenomena of children's problem-solving.

General

Imprint:	Harvard University Press
Country of origin:	United States
Series:	The Developing Child
Release date:	July 1998
First published:	July 1998
Authors:	Stephanie Thornton
Dimensions:	210 x 140 x 11mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	154
Edition:	New
ISBN-13:	978-0-674-11624-5
Categories:	Books > Social sciences > Psychology > Child & developmental psychology Books > Social sciences > Psychology > Cognition & cognitive psychology > General
LSN:	0-674-11624-0
Barcode:	9780674116245

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