Children's Problem-Solving Performance: The Effects of Compliance and Cognitive Factors

Abstract

Abstract This study was designed to examine the robustness of Crombie and Gold's finding (1989) that a high degree of compliance is negatively related to children's problem-solving performance. The effect of compliance on children's problem-solving performance was examined by extending Crombie and Gold's investigation to a different task, assessing the effects of a training session in which children's nonreliance on an adult model was reinforced, and measuring the contribution of relevant cognitive factors. Children's problem-solving competence was examined with a standardized measure of general problem-solving performance and a task-specific measure. Age, verbal intelligence, and task-oriented memory were entered as covariates. High-compliant children did not perform as well as their low-compliant peers on the general problem-solving measure, and this group difference remained significant after the effects of the covariates were taken into consideration. On the task-specific measure, which requires respo...