- Email: [email protected]
An exploratory study of infant problem solving in natural environments
An Exploratory Study of Infant Problem Solving in Natural Environments* Bruce B. Henderson Western
Carolina
University
Louella Dias Pennsylvania
State
University
This study was designed to apply Charlesworth’s ethological approach to the study of problem solving to infant behavior. A problem is defined as a block or interruption in ongoing activity that requires adaptation rather than a habitual, reflexive response. Approximately 75 hours of observations were narratively recorded from the behavior of four infants, 4-18 months of age, in and around their homes. From these observations, 1274 problems were identified and categorized using Charlesworth’s schema. The results of the observations indicated that infants encountered 0.299 problems per minute on the average (range, 0.266-0.409). Most blocks were physical (39%) or social (50%), as were the infants’ responses to the blocks. About two thirds of the blocks were removed and almost all were removed by the child by direct action or by compliance with a social demand. Original ongoing behavior was resumed only 25% of the time. Infants encountered increasingly more social blocks and fewer physical blocks with age. They were increasingly likely with age to remove blocks themselves. Context effects on infant problem solving (adult presence, time of day, location) were few. The results are discussed in terms of the advantages and disadvantages of this approach in studying infant adaptation.
Holly is in the backyard of her house with her father. She toddles over to the stairs to the deck porch and crawls to the top stair. She reaches over, grasps the chain to the baby swing that is sitting on the deck and pulls it toward her. The chain gets caught on a chair. Holly hesitates for a moment, Received January 16, 1986; revised January 27, 1987. Address reprint requests to: Bruce B. Henderson, Department of Psychology, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC 28723. * This article is based on a poster session presented at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development at Toronto, April 1985. We would like to thank A. J., Bobby, Heidi, and Michael for their naturalistic cooperation. We would also like to thank the parents who let us come into their homes to watch and then ignored us. Finally, we thank William Charlesworth for encouraging this project during its infancy. Ethology and Sociobiology 8: 205-213 (1987) 0 Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc., 1987 52 Vanderbilt Ave., New York, New York 10017
0162-3905/87/$03.00
206
B. B. Henderson and L. Dias
then pulls the chain with a quick tug, freeing it from the chair. She backs down one stair pulling the chain as she goes. The swing chair falls down the first stair and rests on Holly’s head. She pushes the chair with one hand while holding onto the chain with the other hand and backs down one more stair. She backs down another stair, pulling on the chain and the chair tumbles to the stair above her. This continues until both she and the seat reach the ground. Holly toddles with the chain in one hand to her father who is in a chair watching her. She holds up the chain and utters “eh” while looking at her father. She turns, toddles to the chair itself, picks it up, toddles back to her father and puts the chair in his lap saying “here mommom.” Holly turns and toddles toward the swing set, looking back to watch her father who is now following her.
T
hese observations ample
of U-month-old Holly provide a concrete exof an active infant encountering the problematic nature of
world. The purpose of the study reported here was to investigate common situations like this one. The general theoretical orientation of the investigation was ecological (e.g., Barker 1965) and ethological (e.g., Charlesworth 1978, 1979a). The aspects of the study that derive from this general orientation are a methodological focus on naturalistic observation of the relation between the infant and his or her environment and a conceptual focus on adaptation as the key to understanding infants’ interactions with their everyday environments and the consequences of such adaptation for later development. The emphasis on naturalistic observation arises from several advantages of that approach (cf. Willems and Rausch 1969): (1) it allows the gathering of information on the characteristics and distribution of phenomena of psychological and developmental interest as they occur in nature; (2) it provides an assessment of the behavioral performance of infant responses to the environment as a context for understanding the particulars of infant adaptation to the environment; and (3) it serves as a supplemental source of hypotheses about infant behavior that are independent of the effect of the often artificial stimulation used in the study of infants in the laboratory situation. The concept of adaptation of the infant to the environment was conceptualized in terms of the broad notion of intelligence as problem-solving behavior. Charlesworth (1979a) has argued that traditional psychometric approaches to intelligence have focused on “one side” of intelligence, individuals’ responses to artificial, standardized test items indicative of what they are capable of doing. He suggests an ethological perspective on intelligent behavior aimed at providing a conceptual and methodological framework for studying the “other side” of intelligence, what individuals actually do in response to natural, everyday problematic situations. Following Charlesworth (1979b), a problem was defined as a situation in which ongoing behavior is interrupted or blocked by an external or internal stimulus condition. A problem is conceived of as existing in a child-environment interaction. The stimulus conditions that create problematic situations are conher everyday
Infant Problem Solving
207
sidered “blocks” in that they halt, slow down, or change the direction of ongoing behavior. These blocks may be social, physical, or epistemic in nature. The behavior made in response to a block is considered problemsolving behavior and also can be social, physical, or epistemic in nature. The result of this behavior may be the removal of the block or that the infant fails to remove the block. The infant may remove the block or it may be removed by another person. The final outcome of the episode is that the original ongoing behavior is or is not resumed. Using this conceptualization of problem-solving adaptation, the specific aims of this study were to (1) examine the applicability of the method developed by Charlesworth et al. (1976) with older children to the study of infant behavior; and (2) provide basic descriptive data on the frequency and types of problems infants encounter in their home environments, how they respond to these blocks, and how context and age difference are related to infant problem solving.
METHOD Subjects Four infants, three boys and one girl, were observed in the study. They ranged in age from 2 to 12 months at the beginning of the study and the oldest infant was 17 months old at the end of the study. All four infants were from middle-class families in a small university community. Two children were firstborn, one was secondbom, and one thirdborn. The infants were selected to sample a variety of ages within the infancy range in order to obtain an idea of how applicable the method was and to determine the types of problems and problem-solving behavior exhibited by infants.
Narrative
Recording
The original observations were made using continuous focal subject recording. A total of 75 hours of observations (S-30 hours per infant) were made in 30-45 minute sessions (some were shorter because infants fell asleep) sampled across waking hours. The guiding instruction to the observer was to make a running account of who and what the infant was attending to, the environmental conditions, and responses to stimuli. Observers were also instructed to note apparent instances of blocks and responses to them by marking them with an asterisk. Observers did not initiate interaction and ignored initiation by the infant. Approximately 5 hours of narrative observations were made by two observers simultaneously. Agreement on the occurrence of blocks during these sessions exceeded 80%.
208
B. B. Henderson
and L. Dias
Problem Coding Narrative records were coded for problem solving using the categories discussed in the following sections (full lists of subcategories are available from the authors): behavior. The infants’ behavior immediately occurring before encountering a block was coded into one of 18 predetermined subcategories. They included playing, crying, staring, scanning, self-stimulation, and other common infant behaviors. Ongoing
conditions. Blocks were coded into 1 of 6 physical, 19 social, or 3 epistemic subcategories. Within each of the three subcategories, blocks represented either impositions or demands made by the environment or needs or desires inferred to be present in the infant (Charlesworth 1979a). Physical blocks involved objects or aspects of the physical environment that resisted the infant or that the infant wanted. Social blocks were impositions by another or desires on the part of the child for some behavior on the part of the adult. Charlesworth (Charlesworth et al. 1976) originally called a third category of blocks “cognitive.” However, the term “epistemic” is used here because these cognitive blocks were defined as demands for information by another or requests (verbal or nonverbal) by the child for information. This usage is consistent with Charlesworth’s later naming of this category as “informational” (Charlesworth 1979a). A miscellaneous category of blocks was used to code blocks that did not fit into the others, usually because the blocking condition apparently occurred sometime before the problem-solving response.
Blocking
Problem-solving responses were coded into one of eight social, eight physical, three epistemic, or six general subcategories. Social responses were attempts by the infant to try to get another to do something, ignoring or refusing to comply with another, or yielding or compliance to another. Physical responses involved manipulation, tool use, or physical force to accomplish an end. Cognitive responses were responses to requests for information, or searches. A general response category was used when an infant made no overt response or made very general responses such as laughing or crying. This last category was also used when the infant did not have time to respond due to the intervention of another.
Responses.
The four possible codes for result were that the blocking condition was removed, was not removed, was removed by another, or was removed by immediate compliance to another’s demand.
Results.
Outcome. Outcome was coded using the same categories as those that were used for ongoing behavior.
Infant Problem Solving
209
For the purpose of the data analyses reported below, blocking conditions and responses were summed over the four general categories of social, physical, epistemic or miscellaneous (blockYgenera (response). Reliability estimates for 10 randomly chosen sessions indicated agreement exceeding 80% for all overall categories.
RESULTS General Characteristics A total of 1,274 problems (blocks) were identified for the four infants. Infants, on the average, encountered a problem every 3 minutes (0.299 problems per minute). The rate varied from 0.245 to 0.409 problems per minute (0.245, 0.266, 0.341,0.409 problems per minute for the four infants). Across infants, most blocks were physical (39%) or social (50%) rather than epistemic (4%). Infants’ responses also tended to be physical (32%) or social (26%) or were general (38%). Only 4% of the responses were epistemic in nature. An examination of Table 1 shows that most blocks were responded to in kind or with general responses. About two thirds (68%) of the blocks were removed. Most blocks removed (89%) were removed by the infant. Although epistemic blocks were relatively rare, they were more likely to be removed (94%) than physical (66%) or social (70%) blocks. Ongoing behavior was resumed after only 25% of the blocks. Ongoing behavior was more likely to be resumed after physical blocks (31% of the time) than after social (21%) or epistemic (13%) blocks.
Context Differences The possibility of context differences was examined as a function of presence or absence of an adult (other than the observer) time of day (morning, afternoon, evening), and location in the house (living, sleeping, eating, toileting, outdoor areas). Type of block encountered, response type, and result were influenced very little by these contextual variables. The only clear exception to this general finding was that blocks were more likely to be removed when an adult was present (77% of the time) than when no adult
Table 1.
Percentage of Infant Response Type as a Function of Block Type Block Type
Response Type Physical Social Epistemic General
Physical
Social
Epistemic
55.8 10.3 0.6 33.1
21.9 42.3 0.6 35.0
2.0 0.0 93.6 4.2
Miscellaneous 0.0 5.4 0.0 94.5
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B. B. Henderson and L. Dias
Table 2.
Selected Age Trends in Problem Categories Age (mo)
Problem Category Rate (problems/min) Block
2-6 0.253
6-9 0.334
9-12 0.239
12-15 0.364
1.5-18 0.385
40.7 43.2 3.3 12.8
45.3 42.3 3.8 8.6
26.5 58.6 4.2 10.7
41.6 54.9 3.4 0.1
31.0 63.7 4.3 1.0
55.5 1.9 23.9 18.7
72.2 0.5 3.5 23.8
68.2 0.1 0.9 30.8
69.4 0.6 1.6 28.1
81.1 1.0 0.0 17.9
Type
Physical Social Epistemic Miscellaneous Results
Child-self Compliance Other interruption Not removed
was present (57% of the time). However, 92% of the blocks removed were removed by the infant himself or herself even when a parent was present.
Age Differences The age trends reported here must be interpreted cautiously because infants were observed at different ages. Only two of the infants are represented in each age range reported. The results are reported for illustrative purposes only. Selected age trends are presented in Table 2. No clear developmental trend is apparent in problem rate. Each of the infants showed a decline with age in problem rate but individual differences obscure these declines in the data reported in Table 2. A much larger sample with infants each observed over a longer period will be needed to clarify developments in the rate of problems encountered. Two interesting, suggestive findings are apparent in Table 2. First, there appears to be a tendency for infants to encounter increasingly fewer physical problems and increasingly more social blocks with age. Second, there seems to be a trend for more blocks to be removed by the infant himself or herself with age.
DISCUSSION Some psychologists might consider this study to be behind the times, perhaps by 100 years. In some ways it is only a step beyond the diary study of Doddy by Darwin (1877). No modern technology or sophisticated methodology was used. Yet these descriptive findings provide a picture of infants, their behavior, and their environments that is frequently obscured in modem laboratory studies of infant cognitive development. As Charlesworth (1978) has argued, one of the strengths of an ethological approach to the study of infant problem solving is its stress on assessing the nature, frequency, and stimulus conditions of problem solving in its natural context. This approach can pro-
Infant Problem Solving
211
vide important information on the ways infants actually solve problems and on the problematic nature of the environment itself that can be used for assessing adaptational demands at different developmental levels as well as for formulating hypotheses for further testing. The present findings indicate that infants are problem solvers. In itself, this may not be a novel view. However, infant problem solving has traditionally been studied in response to problems that are artificially constructed in the laboratory. This results in an emphasis on solutions in response to what was called “physical blocks” in this study. In contrast we found that 50% of the blocks in infants’ actual environments were social in nature. Their problem-solving responses were also frequently social, not just physical or sensorimotor in the usual sense. That the problems the infant encounters, including the social ones, frequently change the child’s ongoing behavior means that infants are continuously accommodating their behavior to challenges from the environment. If, as Piaget has argued, responses to disequilibrium are a major cause of cognitive development, infants are clearly having sufficient opportunity to practice them. The picture of the everyday environment provided here then is that it is highly problematic for the infant. The role of parents in this environment is particularly interesting. Rather than acting as teachers, dispensers of reinforcers, or models, their role appears to have evolved as one of problem setter and problem-solving facilitator. For the most part, parents appear to allow infants to solve problems on their own rather than intervening to provide solutions. On the other hand, blocks were more likely to be removed when an adult was present. It may be that when adults are present, they structure the environment so that infants are more likely to be able to remove blocks on their own. A broader longitudinal data base is required to provide a truly developmental view of infant problem solving. However, two findings of the present study are worth consideration because of their relation to a possible developmental symmetry between child adaptation and the problematic environment. First, as infants’ motor abilities develop, fewer aspects of their physical environment appear to create problems for them whereas the social aspect of their environments present relatively more blocks. Both the infant and the infant’s functional environment are changing with age. Second, infants appear to be increasingly able to deal with blocks, possibly because of an increasingly large repertoire of learned strategies available to use in responding to blocks. Developmental differences in rate were not clear in the present study but might be more apparent if infants were studied in settings more novel than their homes. The one set of findings that can be compared directly to our data is that reported by Charlesworth et al. (1976). The behavior of the infants was similar to that of the somewhat older (about 2 years of age) normal and Down’s syndrome children studied by Charlesworth in a number of ways. Infants encountered problems at a slightly lower rate, tended to encounter
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a similar distribution of block types, and resumed ongoing behavior at about the same rate. Two major differences were apparent, however. First, infants were more likely than the older children to make responses to blocks that were coded “general.” Because the higher levels of general responses occurred when the infants were youngest (see Table 2), this may indicate that infant responses are likely to be undifferentiated. The second major difference was in terms of result: infants were much more likely than Charlesworth’s subjects to remove blocks (68% vs. 36%-41%). We do not have an explanation for this. Perhaps infants encounter “easier” blocks, ones that are more concrete and require less in the way of cognitive processing capacity. The ethological approach to infant problem solving provided in this pilot study leaves many unanswered questions (see Charlesworth, 1979a, for a detailed assessment of the problems with this approach). They include questions about (1) the generalizability of results across children and settings (e.g., contexts other than the home, like shopping malls, museums, or parks may influence rate and type of problems encountered because of higher levels of novelty); (2) the relation of problem solving and individual differences in problem solving to long-term adaptation; and (3) other aspects of adaptation such as problem avoiding and problem creating behaviors. This approach does, however, provide a beginning for describing what infants actually do as problem solvers rather what they can do. It suggests that cognitive development as adaptation may be closely tied to the socialproblematic nature of the environment. It suggests that the adaptive role of parents must be seen as a complex one that combines problem setting with problem-solving facilitation. And in general, it shows that descriptive, naturalistic observation can provide us with interesting hypotheses about the nature of ontogenetic adaptation and about the nature of the environments to which infants must adapt. It may provide us with opportunities to make better connections between early developmental adaptations and their effects on later adaptations.
REFERENCES Barker, R.G. Explorations in ecological psychology. American Psychologist 20: I-14, 1965. Charlesworth, W.R. Ethology: Its relevance for observational studies of human adaptation. In Observing Behavior: Theory and Application in Mental Retardation, G. P. Sackett (Ed.). Baltimore: University Press, 1978, pp. 3-32. Ethology: Understanding the other half of intelligence. In Human Ethology: Claims and Limits of a New Discipline, M. von Cranach, K. Foppa, W. Lepenies, and D. Ploog (Eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979a, pp. 491-529. -An ethological approach to studying intelligence. Human Development 22: 212-216, 1979b. Kjergaard, L., Fausch, D., Daniels, S., Binger, K., and Spiker, D. A Merhodfor Studying Adaptive Behavior in Life Situations: A Study of Everyday Problem Solving in a Normal and Down’s Syndrome Child. (Development Report #6). Minneapolis: University
Infant Problem Solving
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of Minnesota, Research, Development and Demonstration Center in Education of Handicapped Children, 1976. Darwin, CR. A biographical sketch of an infant. Mind 2: 286-294, 1877. Willems, E.P., and Rausch, H.L. Naturalistic Viewpoints in Psychological Research. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1969.
Carolina
University
Louella Dias Pennsylvania
State
University
This study was designed to apply Charlesworth’s ethological approach to the study of problem solving to infant behavior. A problem is defined as a block or interruption in ongoing activity that requires adaptation rather than a habitual, reflexive response. Approximately 75 hours of observations were narratively recorded from the behavior of four infants, 4-18 months of age, in and around their homes. From these observations, 1274 problems were identified and categorized using Charlesworth’s schema. The results of the observations indicated that infants encountered 0.299 problems per minute on the average (range, 0.266-0.409). Most blocks were physical (39%) or social (50%), as were the infants’ responses to the blocks. About two thirds of the blocks were removed and almost all were removed by the child by direct action or by compliance with a social demand. Original ongoing behavior was resumed only 25% of the time. Infants encountered increasingly more social blocks and fewer physical blocks with age. They were increasingly likely with age to remove blocks themselves. Context effects on infant problem solving (adult presence, time of day, location) were few. The results are discussed in terms of the advantages and disadvantages of this approach in studying infant adaptation.
Holly is in the backyard of her house with her father. She toddles over to the stairs to the deck porch and crawls to the top stair. She reaches over, grasps the chain to the baby swing that is sitting on the deck and pulls it toward her. The chain gets caught on a chair. Holly hesitates for a moment, Received January 16, 1986; revised January 27, 1987. Address reprint requests to: Bruce B. Henderson, Department of Psychology, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC 28723. * This article is based on a poster session presented at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development at Toronto, April 1985. We would like to thank A. J., Bobby, Heidi, and Michael for their naturalistic cooperation. We would also like to thank the parents who let us come into their homes to watch and then ignored us. Finally, we thank William Charlesworth for encouraging this project during its infancy. Ethology and Sociobiology 8: 205-213 (1987) 0 Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc., 1987 52 Vanderbilt Ave., New York, New York 10017
0162-3905/87/$03.00
206
B. B. Henderson and L. Dias
then pulls the chain with a quick tug, freeing it from the chair. She backs down one stair pulling the chain as she goes. The swing chair falls down the first stair and rests on Holly’s head. She pushes the chair with one hand while holding onto the chain with the other hand and backs down one more stair. She backs down another stair, pulling on the chain and the chair tumbles to the stair above her. This continues until both she and the seat reach the ground. Holly toddles with the chain in one hand to her father who is in a chair watching her. She holds up the chain and utters “eh” while looking at her father. She turns, toddles to the chair itself, picks it up, toddles back to her father and puts the chair in his lap saying “here mommom.” Holly turns and toddles toward the swing set, looking back to watch her father who is now following her.
T
hese observations ample
of U-month-old Holly provide a concrete exof an active infant encountering the problematic nature of
world. The purpose of the study reported here was to investigate common situations like this one. The general theoretical orientation of the investigation was ecological (e.g., Barker 1965) and ethological (e.g., Charlesworth 1978, 1979a). The aspects of the study that derive from this general orientation are a methodological focus on naturalistic observation of the relation between the infant and his or her environment and a conceptual focus on adaptation as the key to understanding infants’ interactions with their everyday environments and the consequences of such adaptation for later development. The emphasis on naturalistic observation arises from several advantages of that approach (cf. Willems and Rausch 1969): (1) it allows the gathering of information on the characteristics and distribution of phenomena of psychological and developmental interest as they occur in nature; (2) it provides an assessment of the behavioral performance of infant responses to the environment as a context for understanding the particulars of infant adaptation to the environment; and (3) it serves as a supplemental source of hypotheses about infant behavior that are independent of the effect of the often artificial stimulation used in the study of infants in the laboratory situation. The concept of adaptation of the infant to the environment was conceptualized in terms of the broad notion of intelligence as problem-solving behavior. Charlesworth (1979a) has argued that traditional psychometric approaches to intelligence have focused on “one side” of intelligence, individuals’ responses to artificial, standardized test items indicative of what they are capable of doing. He suggests an ethological perspective on intelligent behavior aimed at providing a conceptual and methodological framework for studying the “other side” of intelligence, what individuals actually do in response to natural, everyday problematic situations. Following Charlesworth (1979b), a problem was defined as a situation in which ongoing behavior is interrupted or blocked by an external or internal stimulus condition. A problem is conceived of as existing in a child-environment interaction. The stimulus conditions that create problematic situations are conher everyday
Infant Problem Solving
207
sidered “blocks” in that they halt, slow down, or change the direction of ongoing behavior. These blocks may be social, physical, or epistemic in nature. The behavior made in response to a block is considered problemsolving behavior and also can be social, physical, or epistemic in nature. The result of this behavior may be the removal of the block or that the infant fails to remove the block. The infant may remove the block or it may be removed by another person. The final outcome of the episode is that the original ongoing behavior is or is not resumed. Using this conceptualization of problem-solving adaptation, the specific aims of this study were to (1) examine the applicability of the method developed by Charlesworth et al. (1976) with older children to the study of infant behavior; and (2) provide basic descriptive data on the frequency and types of problems infants encounter in their home environments, how they respond to these blocks, and how context and age difference are related to infant problem solving.
METHOD Subjects Four infants, three boys and one girl, were observed in the study. They ranged in age from 2 to 12 months at the beginning of the study and the oldest infant was 17 months old at the end of the study. All four infants were from middle-class families in a small university community. Two children were firstborn, one was secondbom, and one thirdborn. The infants were selected to sample a variety of ages within the infancy range in order to obtain an idea of how applicable the method was and to determine the types of problems and problem-solving behavior exhibited by infants.
Narrative
Recording
The original observations were made using continuous focal subject recording. A total of 75 hours of observations (S-30 hours per infant) were made in 30-45 minute sessions (some were shorter because infants fell asleep) sampled across waking hours. The guiding instruction to the observer was to make a running account of who and what the infant was attending to, the environmental conditions, and responses to stimuli. Observers were also instructed to note apparent instances of blocks and responses to them by marking them with an asterisk. Observers did not initiate interaction and ignored initiation by the infant. Approximately 5 hours of narrative observations were made by two observers simultaneously. Agreement on the occurrence of blocks during these sessions exceeded 80%.
208
B. B. Henderson
and L. Dias
Problem Coding Narrative records were coded for problem solving using the categories discussed in the following sections (full lists of subcategories are available from the authors): behavior. The infants’ behavior immediately occurring before encountering a block was coded into one of 18 predetermined subcategories. They included playing, crying, staring, scanning, self-stimulation, and other common infant behaviors. Ongoing
conditions. Blocks were coded into 1 of 6 physical, 19 social, or 3 epistemic subcategories. Within each of the three subcategories, blocks represented either impositions or demands made by the environment or needs or desires inferred to be present in the infant (Charlesworth 1979a). Physical blocks involved objects or aspects of the physical environment that resisted the infant or that the infant wanted. Social blocks were impositions by another or desires on the part of the child for some behavior on the part of the adult. Charlesworth (Charlesworth et al. 1976) originally called a third category of blocks “cognitive.” However, the term “epistemic” is used here because these cognitive blocks were defined as demands for information by another or requests (verbal or nonverbal) by the child for information. This usage is consistent with Charlesworth’s later naming of this category as “informational” (Charlesworth 1979a). A miscellaneous category of blocks was used to code blocks that did not fit into the others, usually because the blocking condition apparently occurred sometime before the problem-solving response.
Blocking
Problem-solving responses were coded into one of eight social, eight physical, three epistemic, or six general subcategories. Social responses were attempts by the infant to try to get another to do something, ignoring or refusing to comply with another, or yielding or compliance to another. Physical responses involved manipulation, tool use, or physical force to accomplish an end. Cognitive responses were responses to requests for information, or searches. A general response category was used when an infant made no overt response or made very general responses such as laughing or crying. This last category was also used when the infant did not have time to respond due to the intervention of another.
Responses.
The four possible codes for result were that the blocking condition was removed, was not removed, was removed by another, or was removed by immediate compliance to another’s demand.
Results.
Outcome. Outcome was coded using the same categories as those that were used for ongoing behavior.
Infant Problem Solving
209
For the purpose of the data analyses reported below, blocking conditions and responses were summed over the four general categories of social, physical, epistemic or miscellaneous (blockYgenera (response). Reliability estimates for 10 randomly chosen sessions indicated agreement exceeding 80% for all overall categories.
RESULTS General Characteristics A total of 1,274 problems (blocks) were identified for the four infants. Infants, on the average, encountered a problem every 3 minutes (0.299 problems per minute). The rate varied from 0.245 to 0.409 problems per minute (0.245, 0.266, 0.341,0.409 problems per minute for the four infants). Across infants, most blocks were physical (39%) or social (50%) rather than epistemic (4%). Infants’ responses also tended to be physical (32%) or social (26%) or were general (38%). Only 4% of the responses were epistemic in nature. An examination of Table 1 shows that most blocks were responded to in kind or with general responses. About two thirds (68%) of the blocks were removed. Most blocks removed (89%) were removed by the infant. Although epistemic blocks were relatively rare, they were more likely to be removed (94%) than physical (66%) or social (70%) blocks. Ongoing behavior was resumed after only 25% of the blocks. Ongoing behavior was more likely to be resumed after physical blocks (31% of the time) than after social (21%) or epistemic (13%) blocks.
Context Differences The possibility of context differences was examined as a function of presence or absence of an adult (other than the observer) time of day (morning, afternoon, evening), and location in the house (living, sleeping, eating, toileting, outdoor areas). Type of block encountered, response type, and result were influenced very little by these contextual variables. The only clear exception to this general finding was that blocks were more likely to be removed when an adult was present (77% of the time) than when no adult
Table 1.
Percentage of Infant Response Type as a Function of Block Type Block Type
Response Type Physical Social Epistemic General
Physical
Social
Epistemic
55.8 10.3 0.6 33.1
21.9 42.3 0.6 35.0
2.0 0.0 93.6 4.2
Miscellaneous 0.0 5.4 0.0 94.5
210
B. B. Henderson and L. Dias
Table 2.
Selected Age Trends in Problem Categories Age (mo)
Problem Category Rate (problems/min) Block
2-6 0.253
6-9 0.334
9-12 0.239
12-15 0.364
1.5-18 0.385
40.7 43.2 3.3 12.8
45.3 42.3 3.8 8.6
26.5 58.6 4.2 10.7
41.6 54.9 3.4 0.1
31.0 63.7 4.3 1.0
55.5 1.9 23.9 18.7
72.2 0.5 3.5 23.8
68.2 0.1 0.9 30.8
69.4 0.6 1.6 28.1
81.1 1.0 0.0 17.9
Type
Physical Social Epistemic Miscellaneous Results
Child-self Compliance Other interruption Not removed
was present (57% of the time). However, 92% of the blocks removed were removed by the infant himself or herself even when a parent was present.
Age Differences The age trends reported here must be interpreted cautiously because infants were observed at different ages. Only two of the infants are represented in each age range reported. The results are reported for illustrative purposes only. Selected age trends are presented in Table 2. No clear developmental trend is apparent in problem rate. Each of the infants showed a decline with age in problem rate but individual differences obscure these declines in the data reported in Table 2. A much larger sample with infants each observed over a longer period will be needed to clarify developments in the rate of problems encountered. Two interesting, suggestive findings are apparent in Table 2. First, there appears to be a tendency for infants to encounter increasingly fewer physical problems and increasingly more social blocks with age. Second, there seems to be a trend for more blocks to be removed by the infant himself or herself with age.
DISCUSSION Some psychologists might consider this study to be behind the times, perhaps by 100 years. In some ways it is only a step beyond the diary study of Doddy by Darwin (1877). No modern technology or sophisticated methodology was used. Yet these descriptive findings provide a picture of infants, their behavior, and their environments that is frequently obscured in modem laboratory studies of infant cognitive development. As Charlesworth (1978) has argued, one of the strengths of an ethological approach to the study of infant problem solving is its stress on assessing the nature, frequency, and stimulus conditions of problem solving in its natural context. This approach can pro-
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vide important information on the ways infants actually solve problems and on the problematic nature of the environment itself that can be used for assessing adaptational demands at different developmental levels as well as for formulating hypotheses for further testing. The present findings indicate that infants are problem solvers. In itself, this may not be a novel view. However, infant problem solving has traditionally been studied in response to problems that are artificially constructed in the laboratory. This results in an emphasis on solutions in response to what was called “physical blocks” in this study. In contrast we found that 50% of the blocks in infants’ actual environments were social in nature. Their problem-solving responses were also frequently social, not just physical or sensorimotor in the usual sense. That the problems the infant encounters, including the social ones, frequently change the child’s ongoing behavior means that infants are continuously accommodating their behavior to challenges from the environment. If, as Piaget has argued, responses to disequilibrium are a major cause of cognitive development, infants are clearly having sufficient opportunity to practice them. The picture of the everyday environment provided here then is that it is highly problematic for the infant. The role of parents in this environment is particularly interesting. Rather than acting as teachers, dispensers of reinforcers, or models, their role appears to have evolved as one of problem setter and problem-solving facilitator. For the most part, parents appear to allow infants to solve problems on their own rather than intervening to provide solutions. On the other hand, blocks were more likely to be removed when an adult was present. It may be that when adults are present, they structure the environment so that infants are more likely to be able to remove blocks on their own. A broader longitudinal data base is required to provide a truly developmental view of infant problem solving. However, two findings of the present study are worth consideration because of their relation to a possible developmental symmetry between child adaptation and the problematic environment. First, as infants’ motor abilities develop, fewer aspects of their physical environment appear to create problems for them whereas the social aspect of their environments present relatively more blocks. Both the infant and the infant’s functional environment are changing with age. Second, infants appear to be increasingly able to deal with blocks, possibly because of an increasingly large repertoire of learned strategies available to use in responding to blocks. Developmental differences in rate were not clear in the present study but might be more apparent if infants were studied in settings more novel than their homes. The one set of findings that can be compared directly to our data is that reported by Charlesworth et al. (1976). The behavior of the infants was similar to that of the somewhat older (about 2 years of age) normal and Down’s syndrome children studied by Charlesworth in a number of ways. Infants encountered problems at a slightly lower rate, tended to encounter
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a similar distribution of block types, and resumed ongoing behavior at about the same rate. Two major differences were apparent, however. First, infants were more likely than the older children to make responses to blocks that were coded “general.” Because the higher levels of general responses occurred when the infants were youngest (see Table 2), this may indicate that infant responses are likely to be undifferentiated. The second major difference was in terms of result: infants were much more likely than Charlesworth’s subjects to remove blocks (68% vs. 36%-41%). We do not have an explanation for this. Perhaps infants encounter “easier” blocks, ones that are more concrete and require less in the way of cognitive processing capacity. The ethological approach to infant problem solving provided in this pilot study leaves many unanswered questions (see Charlesworth, 1979a, for a detailed assessment of the problems with this approach). They include questions about (1) the generalizability of results across children and settings (e.g., contexts other than the home, like shopping malls, museums, or parks may influence rate and type of problems encountered because of higher levels of novelty); (2) the relation of problem solving and individual differences in problem solving to long-term adaptation; and (3) other aspects of adaptation such as problem avoiding and problem creating behaviors. This approach does, however, provide a beginning for describing what infants actually do as problem solvers rather what they can do. It suggests that cognitive development as adaptation may be closely tied to the socialproblematic nature of the environment. It suggests that the adaptive role of parents must be seen as a complex one that combines problem setting with problem-solving facilitation. And in general, it shows that descriptive, naturalistic observation can provide us with interesting hypotheses about the nature of ontogenetic adaptation and about the nature of the environments to which infants must adapt. It may provide us with opportunities to make better connections between early developmental adaptations and their effects on later adaptations.
REFERENCES Barker, R.G. Explorations in ecological psychology. American Psychologist 20: I-14, 1965. Charlesworth, W.R. Ethology: Its relevance for observational studies of human adaptation. In Observing Behavior: Theory and Application in Mental Retardation, G. P. Sackett (Ed.). Baltimore: University Press, 1978, pp. 3-32. Ethology: Understanding the other half of intelligence. In Human Ethology: Claims and Limits of a New Discipline, M. von Cranach, K. Foppa, W. Lepenies, and D. Ploog (Eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979a, pp. 491-529. -An ethological approach to studying intelligence. Human Development 22: 212-216, 1979b. Kjergaard, L., Fausch, D., Daniels, S., Binger, K., and Spiker, D. A Merhodfor Studying Adaptive Behavior in Life Situations: A Study of Everyday Problem Solving in a Normal and Down’s Syndrome Child. (Development Report #6). Minneapolis: University
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of Minnesota, Research, Development and Demonstration Center in Education of Handicapped Children, 1976. Darwin, CR. A biographical sketch of an infant. Mind 2: 286-294, 1877. Willems, E.P., and Rausch, H.L. Naturalistic Viewpoints in Psychological Research. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1969.