Social Influences on the Development of Planning in Advance and During Action

This paper reports on a study of the development of children's planning skills with particular attention to the development of planning in advance of action as contrasted with planning during the course of action as adults and children plan together. The nature and extent of maternal assistance and child involvement during dyadic planning involving 40 mothers and their 4 or 8-year-old children, and the influence of the process of joint planning on the child's later individual planning were examined using a route planning task. In addition to planning in advance and planning-in-action, adult and child concern with the rules and organisational aspects of the task versus more strategic concerns were compared in the two ages to examine how microgenetic processes are responsive to ontogenetic development. Older children displayed more planfulness than younger children during interaction with an adult and later on their own, with the important difference being that the older children planned more during the course of action, a strategy that was related to the development of more effective plans during joint planning and to greater planfulness when children planned on their own. Mothers planning with older children were more concerned with strategy and mothers planning with younger children were more concerned with task procedures and rules, indicating that adults structure their guidance in relation to cognitive developmental needs.