From age 6, children deploy effective external strategies on most trials, with strategy number, combination, and order varying widely within and across age groups¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r1 · q3
Currency · newest study 2023 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · recheck by 2028: baselines and conditions change

Subclaims¶

q3 i? Children from age 6 deployed effective external strategies on most trials. → Armitage 2023 q3 i? The number, combination, and order of unique strategies used varied widely both within and across older age groups. → Armitage 2023

Evidence¶

Armitage 2023¶

Armitage, KL; Suddendorf, T; Bulley, A; Bastos, APM; Taylor, AH; Redshaw, J. (2023). Creativity and Flexibility in Young Children's Use of External Cognitive Strategies. Developmental Psychology, 59 (6), pp. 995-1005. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001562

q3 · i? · causal · r1

Across the six transfer trials of the preregistered study, the article reports that from age 6 children "deployed effective external strategies on most trials," alongside wide within- and between-age variation in strategy use. No effect size is printed for this age contrast.

"From age 6, children deployed effective external strategies on most trials, with the number, combination, and order of unique strategies used varying widely both within and across the older age groups."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• From age 4, children spontaneously devise multiple previously unseen reminder-setting strategies across transfer trials, with this tendency increasing with age — related
• Most 3-year-olds deployed a demonstrated external marking strategy, but none modified it to solve a conceptually similar transfer task — related
• Young children can self-initiate external metacognitive strategies and transfer them across contexts, with flexibility increasing over the preschool and early school years — related