The relative efficiency of an action is a central criterion in action control and can be used to predict others’ behavior. Yet, it is unclear when the ability to predict on and reason about the efficiency of others’ actions develops. In three main and two followup studies, 3- to 6-year-old children (n = 242) were confronted with vignettes in which protagonists could take a short (efficient) path or a long path. Children predicted which path the protagonist would take and why (...) the protagonist would take a specific path. The 3-year-olds did not take efficiency into account when making decisions even when there was an explicit goal, the task was simplified and made more salient, and children were questioned after exposure to the agent’s action. Four years is a transition age for rational action prediction, and the 5-year-olds reasoned on the efficiency of actions before relying on them to predict others’ behavior. Results are discussed within a representational redescription account. (shrink)

The effect of time pressure on metacognitive control is of theoretical and empirical relevance and is likely to allow us to tap into developmental differences in performances which do not become apparent otherwise, as previous studies suggest. In the present study, we investigated the effect of time pressure on metacognitive control in three age groups (10-year-olds, 14-year-olds, and adults, n = 183). Using an established study time allocation paradigm, participants had to study two different sets of picture pairs, in an (...) untimed and a timed condition. The results showed that metacognitive self-regulation of study time (monitor-based study time allocation) differed between age groups when studying under time pressure. Even though metacognitive control is firmly coupled at 10 years of age, the overall level of self-regulation of adults was higher than that of children and adolescents across both study time conditions. This suggests that adults might have been more sensitive to experiential metacognitive cues such as JoL for the control of study time. Moreover, the timed condition was found to be more effective than the untimed, with regard to study time allocation. Also, there was an age effect, with adults being more efficient than 10- and 14-year-olds. (shrink)

Although other animals can make simple tools, the expanded and complex material culture of humans is unprecedented in the animal kingdom. Tool making is a slow and late-developing ability in humans, and preschool children find making tools to solve problems very challenging. This difficulty in tool making might be related to the lack of familiarity with the tools and may be overcome by children's long term perceptual-motor knowledge. Thus, in this study, the effect of tool familiarity on tool making was (...) investigated with a task in which 5-to-6-year-old children (n = 75) were asked to remove a small bucket from a vertical tube. The results show that children are better at tool making if the tool and its relation to the task are familiar to them (e.g., soda straw). Moreover, we also replicated the finding that hierarchical complexity and tool making were significantly related. Results are discussed in light of the ideomotor approach. (shrink)