THE ROLES OF PERSONAL INVESTMENT AND REASONING COMPETENCE IN CAREER-RELEVANT EVERYDAY PROBLEM-SOLVING

To examine developmental differences in practical problem-solving, 51 late adolescents and 52 young adults were presented measures of everyd ay problem-solving that were either self-relevant or self-neutral. Res ults indicated: (a) a developmental shift in everyday problem-solving strategies, such that adolescents rated higher than adults those strat egies that involved reconsideration of the problem situations and adap ting to the conditions of the problems. By contrast, young adults rate d higher more goal defensive strategies than adolescents; (b) reasonin g competence was more strongly related to ratings of self-relevant pro blems than to rating of self-neutral problems, but only for the adoles cents, providing some support for a relation between reasoning compete nce and everyday problem-solving; and (c) relevance effects on strateg y ratings were clearly evidenced as both age groups rated planning for the future and shaping the present environment to correspond to their current goals higher for self relevant than for neutral problems. The se findings are discussed in terms of the possible roles of domain spe cificity, personal investment, age, and reasoning competence in adoles cent and adult everyday problem-solving. (C) 1997 Academic Press.