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| Vita |
The changes that occur in the first decade of life are among the most profound in the human lifetime. It is natural, therefore, for those interested in change to be interested in cognitive development. My research focuses on the growth during childhood of problem solving and reasoning. Three areas of particular interest are strategy choices, long-term learning, and educational applications of cognitive-developmental theory. |
| The research on strategy choices focuses on how children decide which strategy to use from among the many strategies they know. My research indicates that even four-year-olds choose among alternative approaches in surprisingly intelligent ways. My colleagues and I have built computational models to illustrate how young children can make such intelligent decisions and also to show how the decisions improve as knowledge and skill improve. For more information see the following articles: Siegler & Stern, 1998; Chen & Siegler, 2000; and Siegler & Araya, 2005. | |
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The research on long-term learning examines how children discover new strategies. Small numbers of children are given prolonged experience in solving problems. Videotapes and verbal protocols obtained on each problem allow examination of the discovery, the circumstances leading up to it, and the subsequent generalization of the discovery to new problems. The emphasis is on individual differences in patterns of learning as well as commonalities in the learning of different children. For more information see the following articles: Siegler & Stern, 1998; Siegler, 2006; Opfer & Siegler, 2007; Siegler & Chen, 2008. |
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These photos by Muybridge illustrate the concept behind the microgenetic method in which changes are closely examined. Here, the stop action photos reveal how horses are able to run as fast as they do.
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The research has yielded a number of educational implications, particularly in the area of early mathematics. It is being used to develop tests to identify young children who are at risk for later mathematical difficulties. We are also developing programs for preventing small, easy-to-remedy, early problems in mathematics from growing into large, intractable, later ones. For more information see the following articles: Ramani & Siegler, 2008; Siegler & Ramani, in press; Siegler, in press. |
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