DEVELOPMENT OF PLANNING AND ITS RELATION TO OTHER COGNITIVE-PROCESSES

The purpose of this study was to (a) delineate the course of developme nt of children's planning skills during school years, (b) examine whet her different levels of planning exist, and (c) explore the role of ot her cognitive processes as cognitive correlates of planning. The parti cipants were 250 students, 50 from each of the five targeted grades (3 , 5, 7, 9, and 11). They each completed a battery of planning, attenti on, and simultaneous and successive processing tasks. MANOVA indicated that the main effect of grade was significant, whereas gender had no significant effect on planning. Pairwise comparisons of performance me ans between grades indicated that developmental trajectories were not uniform across planning tasks. Correlation and regression analyses sho wed that the relationship between planning tasks and attention, and si multaneous and successive processing scores varied as a function of th e planning task and the grade level. Furthermore, two planning factors were found and cluster analyses of variables indicated that one of th e tasks, Crock-the-Code, may represent a different kind of planning th an the other planning tasks used.