PLANNING IN CONTEXT - DEVELOPMENTAL AND SITUATIONAL CONSIDERATIONS

An analysis of the components of planning is presented that incorporat es problem representation, goal selection, a decision to plan, strateg y choice, strategy execution, and monitoring. We argue that which comp onents are required and which developmental changes are triggered or r evealed depend on the planning task. We present analyses of three task s typically used to study planning: the Tower of Hanoi; errand schedul ing; and story comprehension. We argue that the performance on the Tow er of Hanoi task reflects representational and monitoring demands, and that story comprehension depends strongly on social comprehension and monitoring. Because many everyday plans like running errands have pre packaged components and take place in a less controllable environment, affective and attributional components affect most strongly the choic e of goals, decision to plan, and strategy choice. We then speculate o n the course of development of each processing component and the compl ex interplay of cognition, beliefs, attitudes, and motivation in assem bling and implementing plans to handle different tasks. Finally, we co nsider changes across the life span in the kinds of plans that are gen erated.