Recently, this theory was expanded to allow for discovery of new strategies, as opposed to changes in the frequency of strategy use. More specifically, when an individual observes their own problem solving behavior, they will recognize patterns in their behavior that reveal information about the important relationships in the problem. Once they become aware of this information, they will develop a new representation of the problem. Therefore, discovery of a new problem representation should be predicted by prior use of strategies that contain embedded knowledge about the relationships contained in the new problem representation. In our current research, we are examining the contribution of these processes to qualitative representational change in a gear system task.
Participants solve gear system problems in the context of a train race.
Over the course of the experimental session, children and adults first discover a simple representation of this problem and later discover increasingly sophisticated representations. Our research suggests that the underlying processes responsible for representational change depend on the efficacy of the child's current representation. The Acquisition of Intuitive Models Children and adults acquire impressive models of how their physical and social worlds function. We refer to these representations as intuitive models to distinguish them from the more formal models constructed by scientists. Intuitive models are a pervasive and naturally developing type of knowledge representation, and are therefore of considerable interest to researchers who study cognitive development.