Developmental and Task Factors in Logo Programming

Abstract

Ninety children (7 to 12 years) were taught simplified Logo programming commands, which they used to solve computer mazes. Mazes were solved under conditions of either immediate—each command entered had an immediate, visible effect on the movement of the turtle—or delayed-feedback—the invisible turtle moved with each command, but showed its current position only after every six commands. These conditions were designed to model programming interactively versus in the editor. All children solved a final maze with no-feedback (i.e., the turtle moved invisibly, but never showed its position). It was hypothesized that experience in immediate mode would facilitate learning in younger children, but that experience in delayed mode would lead to equal or better learning in older children. Performance was scored for programming errors. Older children performed better than younger children on all mazes; performance with immediate feedback was better than that with delayed; and more difficult mazes tended to elicit higher error rates or longer latencies. On the final no-feedback maze, prior experience in delayed mode led to poor performance for seven-eight-year olds, but not for older children. Near transfer of programming performance was examined with two off-computer tasks (i.e., command generation and command interpretation). In correlational analyses measures of mental capacity (i.e., working memory) and analytical-ability/field-independence were found to relate to programming performance. Findings have implications for the timing of introduction of the editor in the Logo curriculum.