Children's Problem Solving in Relation to Perceptual Habit

Abstract

The left-to-right and top-to-bottom perceptual scanning habits established in reading were hypothesized to transfer to a problem-solving task, lessening effectiveness of problem solving where the habitual response did not coincide with the demands of the problem. Responses of 120 first-grade children to seven problems were studied; the child was asked to press bulbs in a 5 × 5 array to determine which of two or more alternative patterns was “correct.” The majority of initial bulb presses were in positions predicted from reading habits (upper left corner, middle of the top row, or middle of the left column of the array). Those subjects initially pressing one of the predicted bulbs scored significantly more poorly than subjects initially pressing other bulbs on those problems where the upper left bulbs did not contain information relevant to the solution of the problem.