Effects of Intelligence and Feedback on Children's Strategic Competence

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Effects of Intelligence and Feedback on Children's Strategic Competence in Numerosity Determination Koen Luwel1,2, Ageliki Foustana3, Lieven Verschaffel2, & Yiannis Papadatos3 1 Hogeschool-UniversiteitBrussel, Belgium 2 Centre for Instructional Psychology and Technology, KatholiekeUniversiteit Leuven, Belgium 3 Department of Primary Education, University of Athens, Greece Introduction Results • The present study had two goals: • (a) Investigating the role of intelligence in the selection and use of cognitive strategies by comparing three intelligence groups on the four parameters of strategic competence proposed by Lemaire and Siegler (1995): • Repertoire: Which strategies are used? • Frequency: How often are they applied? • Efficiency: How fast and how accurate are they executed? • Adaptiveness: How adaptive are they selected? • (b) Examining the possible role of different types of feedback (FB) (i.e., outcome FB vs. strategy FB) on the improvement of children’s strategic competence Repertoire Frequency Efficiency Method • Participants • 120 sixth graders (M =12.54 yrs.) were divided in three intelligence groups on the basis of their WISCIII-R results: • Low intelligent group (average IQ = 77, range: 68-80) • Medium intelligent group (average IQ = 104, range: 90-110 ) • High intelligent group (average IQ = 129, range: 123-145) N.B. % Children applying both the addition and subtraction strategy in the respective choice conditions The choice data showed a significant increase in the frequency of the subtraction strategy between pretest and intervention for the low and medium intelligent group. This increase was significantly stronger in the strategy FB than in the outcome FB condition. The no-choice strategy speed and accuracy data had a similar pattern of results. We only found effects for the subtraction strategy revealing a significant increase in speed and accuracy between the pre- and posttest in the low and medium intelligence groups. There was no effect of type of FB. None of the low intelligent children spontaneously applied the smart subtraction strategy during the pretest, whereas half of the medium and almost all high intelligent children used it in that session. These percentages increased in the intervention and posttest and were stronger in the strategy FB than in the outcome FB condition. Procedure Participants were asked to determine, as quickly and accurately as possible, all numerosities of green blocks between 20 and 45 that were presented randomly in a 7 x 7 grid. This task allows for the use of two different strategies, the choice of which is mainly dependent on the ratio of green blocks to empty squares in the grid. Adaptiveness How to measure adaptiveness? The application of this method on our data revealed that the high intelligent group was significantly more adaptive than the low and medium intelligent groups in both conditions of the pretest. The provision of FB, however, led to a significant improvement in these latter two groups. This improvement was more pronounced in the strategy FB than in the outcome FB condition. The use of the addition strategy in the choice condition will result in a linear increase in RTs, followed by a linear decrease as soon as the subtraction strategy is applied. The application of a two-phase segmented linear regression on the individual RT-patterns allows estimating the trial on which participants switch from the addition to the subtraction strategy (i.e. the observed change point). Addition strategy: determining the number of green blocks Subtraction strategy: subtracting the empty squares from the total number of squares in the grid Design The choice/no-choice (C/NC) method (Siegler & Lemaire, 1997) was applied within a test – intervention – test design. The RTs in the NC-addition condition increase linearly as a function of numerosity, whereas they decrease linearly in the NC-subtraction condition. The application of simple linear regressions on the individual RT-patterns of the correctly solved NC trials allows determining the most optimal item for switching from one strategy to the other (i.e. the optimal change point). From this point on, the subtraction strategy will be faster but equally accurate than the addition strategy. Conclusions The pretest data show a very large influence of intelligence on the different parameters of strategic competence. Intelligent children are, compared to less intelligent children, more prone to use an insightful strategy, apply this strategy more frequently, execute it more efficiently and select their strategies more adaptively. Provision of feedback, however, results in a strong improvement in all these parameters for medium and, especially, low intelligent children. Moreover, we observed that providing feedback about children's strategy choices resulted in a larger improvement than informing them about the accuracy of their outcomes. Interestingly, this differential effect of feedback was only observed in those parameters of strategic competence that dealt with strategy selection. It was not found in the parameters concerning strategy execution. Although medium intelligent children benefited less from feedback than low intelligent children, it did enabled them to reach the same levels of performance as high intelligent children. This was not the case for the low intelligent children for most of the parameters of strategic competence. Finally, providing feedback had no effect at all on the strategic performance of high intelligent children. This finding suggests that these children already exhibited an optimal level of performance from the onset of this study. All participants ran the task under one choice condition and two no-choice conditions: Choice condition: participants were allowed to choose freely between the addition and the subtraction strategy to solve each item of the task No-choice conditions: participants were required to use either the addition (= NC-addition) or the subtraction strategy (= NC-subtraction) on all items of the task Intervention (C) Posttest (C/NC) Pretest (C/NC) The difference in location between the observed and the optimal change point can be regarded as a measure for the adaptiveness of strategy choices: the smaller the difference between both change points, the better an individual has chosen his/her strategies as a function of their performance characteristics. Outcome FB (deviation from correct answer) Assessment of (differential) effect of FB on strategic competence Assessment of initial strategic competence Strategy FB (based on NC data from pretest) Contact: Koen.Luwel@ped.kuleuven.be