Children's Task Performance Research Articles

Gender Division of Tasks by Parents and Their Children

The division of parenting tasks between wives and husbands was explored in a sample of 279 Australian families containing a 9–11-year-old child, and the children's performance of household tasks was compared with their parents' division of labor. Three parenting factors (domestic care, leisure/enrichment, and psychological), and four child factors (handyman, domestic, maturity, and babysitting) were obtained. Mothers were more active than fathers on all three parenting factors, but significant differences were found between parents of differing SES and cultural backgrounds. Among children, the greatest sex difference was found on the handyman factor, where boys greatly outperformed girls. Boys' performance on this factor was not related to parental division of labor or social background, but girls' performance was higher when they were only children and when they lived in higher SES families. Girls outperformed boys on the domestic and maturity factors. Parenting style, SES, and cultural background also were significantly related to these factor scores. Apart from child's sex, cultural background was the strongest predictor of children's task performance.

Dual task performance in children: Generalized and lateralized effects of memory encoding upon the rate and variability of concurrent finger tapping

Interference between concurrent tasks was used to investigate the brain basis of capacity limitations apparent when children encode information. Seventy-three right-handed children in Grades 1–4 engaged in speeded unilateral finger tapping while encoding a variable number of faces or numbers for subsequent recognition testing. With both face and number encoding, tapping rate decreased as memory load increased. Encoding numbers was more disruptive than encoding faces. Both encoding tasks slowed right-hand tapping more than left-hand tapping, relative to control tapping performance, but had only a bilateral effect on the variability of tapping. Although overall interference was less than that observed with a comparsion task (i.e., speaking), the asymmetry of interference was comparable. The results suggest that cerebral lateralization for memory encoding, as well as for speech, is constant across the age range of 6–10 years. Findings regarding developmental change in overall capacity, however, are task specific: interference from speaking but not from memory encoding decreases with increasing age.

Children's Task Interest and Performance

This study explored the effect of extrinsic reward on children's task interest and performance. A total of 48 third-grade children participated in groups that differed in whether or not rewards were offered and the task used (mazes or block design). Each child participated twice. The baseline session was designed to assess initial nonreward levels. The experimental session, which occurred one week later, was identical except that half of the children received rewards for their participation. Results revealed that the effects of reward on subsequent intrinsic interest were found to vary as a function of the task. Lowered interest under reward conditions was found only for those children in the block design task. However, rewards were found to adversely affect immediate task performance on both tasks, supporting McGraw's (1978) prediction model. Reward subjects also perceived the task to be of greater difficulty than did nonreward subjects. These findings suggest the effects of rewards on performance and interest are not directly related and that task characteristics, particularly perceptions of task difficulty, may be important mediators of reward effects.

幼児の課題遂行の一決定因としての自己評価の機能

Experiment I was conducted to investigate the relationship between motivation to play with the game, goal-setting, self-evaluation, and motivation to persist the game in preschool children. Results indicated that motivation to play with the game seemed to persist only when children could evaluate their own results appropriately. Experiment II was conducted to examine the effect of self-evaluation on motivation to persist the game. As predicted, children who changed their self-evaluation through treatment exhibited greater improvement of game persistence than those who did not change their self-evaluation. The results suggested the important role of self-evaluation in preschool children's task performance.

Process assessment of intelligence in learning disabled and mentally retarded children: A multidirectional model

This article unifies a diversity of isolated research in order to provide a theoretical framework for process assessment. A process assessment model is presented that focuses on learning disabled and mildly retarded children's intelligent task performance. The model is theoretically based on the experimental findings of Brown and Campione (1978), Butterfield (1981), Newell and Simon (1972) and Sternberg (1977, 1983) to name a few. Five cognitive planes are proposed that assess: (a) the relationship between strategy and overall performance; (b) the knowledge base that influences strategy development; (c) the ability to coordinate, direct, and organize search strategies; (d) the metacognitive parameters of learning and performance; and (e) the abstracting of problem‐solving strategies. Within each plane, different components for assessment are presented. The model suggests that intelligent behavior may develop independently or within different planes and such performance may be characterized as “opportunist...

The Effects of Learned Helplessness Training on Subsequent Task Performance in Children

Although past research with children has utilized the learned helplessness label, none of this work has employed the classic triadic design which was originally used to demonstrate helplessness effects in infrahuman species and human adults. This design is necessary to determine whether the behavioral effects of interest actually follow from exposure to uncontrollability. In order to examine more closely the existence of the learned helplessness phenomenon in children, a study was conducted exposing fifth and sixth graders to contingent, noncontingent, or no outcome. Exposure to contingent outcomes resulted in a facilitation effect. More importantly, the effects of noncontingency were modulated by the kinds of attributions made to failure situations common in the lives of children. A helplessness effect was demonstrated among internal attributors exposed to uncontrollability. Performance was facilitated among external attributors exposed to noncontingent outcomes.

What makes a task difficult?

This study explores the relationship between different task requirements and children's task performance and ratings of task difficulty. Four hundred and sixty five children (9 to 13 years old) read texts and answered questions, involving well-defined or ill-defined goals and requiring different thought operations. It was found that rated difficulty and performance were highly related for questions involving a well-defined goal. A simple modus ponens inference was easiest, checking most difficult, and recall of the text ranked in the middle. A question, involving an ill-defined goal was rated to be most difficult, whereas performance was quite high. The results confirm the assumptions that judgment of difficulty relies on two sources of information: 1) perception of goal, and 2) perception of processing effort.

Causes of young children's confusion of same and different

Three experiments are reported that explore 3-year-olds' and adults' understanding of the words, same and different. In the first, 3-year-olds selected a bead that was “the same color as” or “a different color from” a target bead. In the second, 3-year-olds selected a bead that was “the same in some way as” or “different in some way from” a target bead. Contrary to results reported previously, the majority of consistent responders chose a bead identical with the target in response to the different instruction in both experiments. The rates of both incorrect different responding and incorrect same responding were greater in Experiment II than in Experiment I. In Experiment III, adults chose objects that were “the same as” or “different from” a target; unlike the children, they never chose a target-identical object in response to different instructions. It is argued that children and adults treat same and different differently, and that children's task performance is influenced by three factors: semantic, pragmatic, and nonlinguistic.

Impact of motivation on task performance of children and without psychoeducational problems.

Two studies focusing on differential effects of strategies to enhance motivation are reported. One study included 59 nonproblem elementary-age children; the other involved 77 students (7 to 16 years of age) with learning and behavior problems. In both studies a brief intervention designed to increase motivation was implemented prior to a second administration of a coding task. As predicted, nonproblem students did not improve to a greater degree than those in practice and volunteer control groups. In contrast, problem students showed a significant increment in performance following the motivational manipulation. Results are interpreted as indicating (a) that brief strategies to enhance motivation can improve performance of problem students, (b) that the effect of any such strategy is directly related to both its potency and the degree to which initial motivation to perform is diminished, and (c) that problem students often may be performing significantly below current capability.

The Manipulation of Maternal Expectancy in a Mother-Child Interaction

Summary Seventy-four dyads of mother and nine-year-old son or daughter completed interactional tasks before and after receiving performance feedback. The dyads were randomly assigned to one of three feedback conditions, independent of the child's task performance. In the positive feedback condition mothers were told that their children were doing extremely well; in the negative feedback condition, that they were doing rather poorly; there was also a no-feedback condition. The effect of feedback was to alter the mother's evaluations and expectations of her child in spite of the fact that performance did not change. In particular, negative feedback produced the most profound effect resulting in negative evaluations, expectations, and an increase in the inconsistency of the mother's interactional behavior.

Indeterminate and Sequential Goal Structures in Relation to Task Performance in Children's Small Groups

BROWNELL, CELIA A., and HARTUP, WILLARD W. Indeterminate and Sequential Goal Structures in Relation to Task Performance in Children's Small Groups. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1981, 52, 651-659. Task performance was studied in triads of third-grade children exposed to 4 instructional conditions, each consisting of 3 phases. During the first and third phases all groups received promotive instructions (equal rewards given to each participant). During the second phase triads received 1 of 4 types of instructions: individualistic (rewards allocated proportionate to individual performance), contrient (winner take all), no reward (all rewards suspended), and undesignated (participants told that rewards would be allocated, but not to whom). Performance under the no reward condition resembled performance under standard promotive instructions, while performance under the undesignated condition resembled that under standard individualistic instructions. This differentiation is discussed in relation to the immediate experimental context (cooperatively oriented) and the larger context of the school (individualistically oriented). There was no carry-over of second-phase task strategies into third-phase performance.

Indeterminate and Sequential Goal Structures in Relation to Task Performance in Children's Small Groups

Indeterminate and Sequential Goal Structures in Relation to Task Performance in Children's Small Groups

The Effects of Family Constellation and Child Gender on Parental Use of Evaluative Feedback

Mothers and fathers of 43 middle-class families were observed individually interacting during a paper-folding task with either their only or middle child in order to assess parental use of evaluation and task-facilitative behaviors with preschoolers. Middle children were from 3-child families in which the older sibling was the same sex as the target child. Sibling spacing was greater than 36 months in 12 families and less than 36 months in 11 families. With total interaction, parental income, education, and age as control variables, analyses indicated that parental approvals, disapprovals, task facilitative feedback, and helping behaviors varied with parent gender, child gender, and family constellation. Children's task performance did not differ significantly among groups. It was concluded that gender effects on parental use of evaluation feedback in parent-child teaching interactions may be different for families with different types of family structure.

The Integration of Verbal and Motor Behavior in Preschool Children

GOODMAN, SHERRYL HOPE. The Integration of Verbal and Motor Behavior in Preschool Children. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1981, 52, 280-289. 38 preschool children were observed and videotaped while spontaneously emitting private speech during jigsaw-puzzle solving. The study examined how children's verbalizations are sequentially related to the ongoing stream of motoric behavior. Results indicated that puzzle solutions which were accompanied by a high rate of verbalizations, especially verbalizations of plans or thoughts and emotional expletives, were judged as more proficient, solved with a high rate of puzzle-solving moves, and also were completed in a shorter period of time. Verbalizations were found not to be distributed randomly across the stream of puzzle-solving behaviors. While success on the task is associated with and occurs in the presence of private speech, the verbalizations actually occur within a series of failed or nearly failed acts in the sequence of puzzle-solving activities. Findings are interpreted in light of Vygotsky's notion of the integral use of language in children's task performance.

Sex-Typed instructions and sex-role preference in young children's task performance

Two measures of sex-role preference were administered to 32 male and 32 female preschool children. Each group of children was divided according to sex-role preference scores, assigned to a male experimenter or a female experimenter, and performed two sorting tasks after being instructed that one task was masculine and the other feminine. One analysis was based on the sex preference of subjects as measured by the IT Scale for Children and the other was based on subject assignment from Toy Preference Test scores. The hypothesis that sex-role preference would predict performance on sex-labeled tasks was partially confirmed. All subjects performed better on the “female” task than on the “male” task and more accurately on all tasks with a male experimenter than with a female experimenter.

The Effect of External Reward on Interest and Quality of Task Performance in Children of High and Low Intrinsic Motivation

LOVELAND, KATHRYN KERNODLE, and OLLEY, J. GREGORY. The Effect of External Reward on Interest and Quality of Task Performance in Children of High and Low Intrinsic Motivation. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1979, 50, 1207-1210. In order to clarify the conditions under which material rewards have a detrimental effect upon children's later interest in the rewarded task, the effect of a reward for drawing was measured with 24 preschool children. The children were grouped as high or low in initial interest on the basis of observation of time spent drawing, and half the children in each group were given an expected reward for drawing, while the other half received no reward. Time spent drawing and of drawing were measured 1 week and 7 weeks later. The high initial-interest children who received a reward lost interest when observed a week later, while the low-interest rewarded children gained interest. By 7 weeks both groups returned to their original levels. At the time of the reward, high-interest rewarded subjects drew more drawings, but of poorer quality, than did the unrewarded high-interest children. Low-interest children who were rewarded also drew more than their unrewarded counterparts, but quality was not affected.

The Effect of External Reward on Interest and Quality of Task Performance in Children of High and Low Intrinsic Motivation

The Effect of External Reward on Interest and Quality of Task Performance in Children of High and Low Intrinsic Motivation

Effects of positive and negative adult-child interactions on children's task performance and task preferences

In individual sessions, an adult directed three boys to work on each of three different tasks. Within a given session the on-task behavior for one task was praised, the off-task behavior for another task was verbally reprimanded, and all behavior was ignored with the third task. Using a multielement baseline design, the manner in which the adult interacted with the children on a given task varied from day to day. Across 18 sessions, verbal reprimands produced the highest task rates, with praise producing only a slightly higher rate of responding than noninteraction. After each session the children were given the choice of which of the three tasks they wished to work on when the adult left the room for a few minutes. Tasks associated with verbal reprimands of off-task behavior were never chosen. The first and second choices were always the task associated with praise for on-task behavior or the task where the children were ignored. These preferences generalized to similar tasks.

The impact of anticipated reward upon cross-age tutoring.

The interpersonal interaction and task performance of children were assessed in a cross-age tutoring situation. In the reward condition, 12 sixth-grade girls were promised movie tickets for successfully teaching a sorting game to a first-grade girl. In the no-reward condition, children taught the game without promise of reward. Children were randomly assigned to pairs and conditions. The results indicated more criticism, more demands, and less efficacious use of time in the reward condition. The no-reward condition was marked by a more positive emotional tone, greater learning by the younger children, and fewer errors. The results are viewed as evidence that anticipation of reward generates an instrumental orientation that has deleterious social effects. How does the promise of reward for engaging in an activity affect the attitude and behavior of an individual? The general finding of four previous experiments (Deci, 1972; Kruglanski, Friedman, and Zeevi, 1971; Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973; Condry & Chambers, Note 1; Smith, Note 2) have suggested that the promise of a reward (prize) for engaging in an activity in which one has a relatively high level of initial intrinsic interest is associated with subsequent deterioration of interest and, in one study, competence in that activity. The previous research, however, has raised many questions, perhaps more than it has answered. It appeared that the most important area for further investigation lay in the mechanisms through which anticipated reward affected motivation and performance. It was assumed that the effects would be most significant in situations involving contingent reward. These previous studies have dealt with essentially nonsocial tasks. The focus has principally been on interest and cognitive performance in the task, with performance being assessed by tests of memory, creativity, and manipulative tasks. The present study investigated a different type of situation, one stressing social interaction. Whereas previous research has focused on cognitive characteristics of the relation between subject and task, the present

A methodological and philosophical critique of intervention-oriented research.

Intervention-oriented research programs typically yield differences between social classes in the task performance of children and the parent interaction style. It is then concluded that deficiencies in task performance are due to limitations in the family environment, and this pathology model yields the proposal to alter lower-class parental behavior. Questions concerning the methods and procedures for obtaining class differences, interpretation of these differences, and the decision to intervene are raised. The popularity and social relevance of intervention-oriented research dictate that such programs be critically evaluated. Programs in this area generally include some assessment of deficits in lower-class children and limitations in some aspect of the lower-class family environment, and a causal connection between the two is implied. The social and ethical considerations surrounding such programs, which have as their logical end point an intervention in individual lives, demand that there be careful examination of implicit value judgments, as well as research methodology.