{"pk":30380,"title":"A Problem Space Perspective on the Development of Children's Understanding of Gears","subtitle":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates two contexts of children's developing knowledge of the physical world: (1) the macro-context of different age cohorts (8-9 years versus 11-12 years); and (2) the micro-context of a one-hour experimental session. Twenty subjects were video-taped, constructing goal-states for a task inolving gears. Four distinct systemic approaches or problem spaces were identified: (a) Euclidean, (b) Kinematic, (c) Dynamic, and (d) Topological. The Arithmetic Modifier, effecting a numerical charaterization of a problem space, can operate on any of the four. Cross-age, there was the substantial overlap of inital problem space emplyed, and minimal overlap of a final problem space. This frequency of adaptive shift in problem space, strongly and positively correlated with age, suggests that, when confronted with an unfamiliar task domain, the capacity to recognize a problem space as inappropriate and to evoke another more adequate problem space appears to be a component of the answer to the classic question, \"What develops?\"","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[],"section":"Submitted Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3tq862n6","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Kathleen","middle_name":"E.","last_name":"Metz","name_suffix":"","institution":"Carnegie-Mellon University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"1984-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/30380/galley/20231/download/"}]}