In a seminal study of children's problem solving, Siegler (1976) used the rule assessment method to examine children's performance on balance-scale problems
Define the rule assessment method, and describe one of Siegler's key findings related to children's performance on balance-scale problems.
What will be an ideal response?
The rule assessment method is a method for generating experimental stimuli in problem-solving research. When using this method, an investigator systematically constructs a set of problems that can be used to differentiate between children who use different rules/strategies to solve a particular class of problems. The problems are constructed such that children who use different rules/strategies produce different patterns of responses across the problems. Using this method, Siegler documented a developmental progression in the rules/strategies that children use to solve balance-scale problems. That is, the rules/strategies that children used to solve the problems got more advanced with age. However, only 20% of adolescents used the most advanced strategy. Siegler also found that eight-year-olds, but not five-year-olds, benefit from feedback on conflict problems. He showed that this age-related difference was due to differences in encoding performance. Eight-year-olds encode both weight and distance accurately, whereas five-year-olds only encode weight accurately.
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