Goal choice in preschoolers is influenced by context, cognitive flexibility, and metacognition

Abstract

IntroductionGoal choice is one of the first, and most important, steps in self-regulated learning (SRL). It is particularly challenging for young children (before 5–6 years), who tend to rely on available environmental cues, which makes their goals fragile because of the instability and variability of the environment. Therefore, it can be assumed that the conditions under which a task is performed may influence a child’s learning goal choice. Moreover, adapting to constraints involves control capacities provided by executive functions (EF) and metacognition.MethodsThe main purpose of this study was to determine factors that influence the way preschoolers choose a learning goal during the first step of SRL. We tested whether adding constraints to perform a task may influence the choice of the procedure that a child aims to learn to perform this task. We also examined the role of cognitive flexibility and metacognition in goal selection in the face of these changes, and tested the influence of change over time, comparing participants’ performance at two points in the school year. One hundred 4-year-olds were asked to perform a jigsaw puzzle task under two conditions: predictable vs. unpredictable environmental change. Individual levels of cognitive flexibility and metacognition were also measured.ResultsThe results show that only a predictable change, but not an unpredictable one, leaded children to change their learning goals. Furthermore, when participants were faced with an unpredictable change, metacognition and cognitive flexibility significantly predicted learning goal change. Results are discussed regarding the development of SRL, flexibility, and metacognition. Educational suggestions are proposed.Highlights– The choice of a learning goal by a preschooler is influenced by the conditions of task performance and environmental cues. Facing a predictable change is more disruptive to children before the age of 4.5, and more likely to cause them to change their goal.– A shift is observed, from age 4 and during the school year, from a perceptual to a conceptual level of processing.– Cognitive flexibility and metacognition also determine learning goal choice in preschoolers, but only in front of unpredictable changes.

Cognitive Flexibility and Analogy

“…Mapping is also affected by prior knowledge to a certain extent, as it is more readily implemented when the relations shared by the analogs echo familiar knowledge (Goswami and Brown 1990;Bassok et al 1995). When the structure involved in the analogy is more abstract than the initially encoded one, cognitive flexibility appears to be crucially involved through an abstract recoding of the situations (Clément and Richard 1997;Sander and Richard 1997;Clément 2006;Hofstadter and Sander 2013;Clerc and Clément 2016;Gros et al 2020). This process consists of reconsidering the concept involved in the initial encoding so as to favor a more abstract one that will highlight the similarity of the analogs.…”

Judgments of relevance in preschoolers: a study of training and transfer of self-cueing strategies

“…This is in line with recommendations from researchers in SRL, who point out that having a repertoire of strategies and being trained in their use is not enough. Learners must learn to make personal choices according to context and conditions ( Miele and Scholer, 2018 ; Winne, 2018 ; Leclercq et al, 2023 ). To achieve this, strategies need not only to be learned, but also to be experimented and practiced repeatedly in a variety of situations, allowing to assess their validity and conditions of use ( Winne, 2011 , 2018 ).…”

“…SRL is made up of the processes by which learners mobilize knowledge and strategies according to the context, in order to organize and control their own learning in order to achieve their goals ( Zimmerman, 2008 ; Schunk and Zimmerman, 2011 ; Winne, 2018 ). These processes build on the learner’s ability to reflect, adapt and adjust in the face of change, thus linking personal and contextual characteristics in a learning situation ( Winne and Perry, 2000 ; Boekaerts and Corno, 2005 ; Cleary et al, 2012 ; Pino-Pasternak et al, 2014 ; Leclercq et al, 2023 ). The key skills for self-regulation consist in being able to (1) identify goals that give meaning to the work and set them as goals to be achieved, (2) plan one’s work and revise this plan if necessary, by adapting and modifying one’s behavior in the face of internal or environmental changes, and (3) protect oneself from distractions by adopting a wide variety of strategies (goal revision, organization, elaboration) which are necessary for carrying out academic tasks.…”

“…SRL thus enables us to better understand how learners form and maintain learning intentions, and how they can judge the relevance of information for the learning goal. Current work aims to better understand the factors that influence SRL, such as task and context characteristics ( Cleary et al, 2012 ; Pino-Pasternak et al, 2014 ; Gorges and Göke, 2015 ; Leclercq et al, 2023 ). Developmental aspects of SRL have been studied in recent years, although they have long been ignored and largely underestimated in the youngest children ( Zimmerman and Kitsantas, 1997 ; Montroy et al, 2016 ; Perry, 2019 ).…”