Three studies were conducted to examine developmental changes in the integration of ability and effort information to predict performance. Functional measurement procedures were used to determine if it is possible to use some simple algebraic operation such as addition or multiplication to describe the way these cues are combined. Children aged 6-11 years and adults were asked to predict how many puzzles a child could put together as a function of 3 levels of ability and 3 levels of effort. The results showed a developmental progression in the integration process, in which an additive rule characterized the responses of the youngest children while a multiplicative rule characterized the responses of the older children and adults. An additional finding indicated that even the youngest children were able to use both cues in forming judgments and did not center on only one cue as would be predicted from Piaget. Also the results showed that effort was increasingly more important than ability in predicting outcomes.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.