Goal sketches, social rules, and strategy development

The current research investigated the influence of social rules and "goal sketches" in a memory task and their relationship to the development and use of memory strategies. Social rules are arbitrary conventions defined with reference to a particular social setting (Siegal & McDonald Storey, 1985; Tisak & Turiel, 1988; Turiel, 1983) and help us understand which behaviors are permissible and which are not in different situations (Smetana, 1981; Tisak & Turiel, 1988; Turiel, 1983; Weston & Turiel, 1980). Goal sketches, on the other hand, are abstract knowledge structures that embody the hierarchy of subgoals that legitimate strategies must meet (Siegler, 1996; Siegler & Crowley, 1994; Siegler & Jenkins, 1989). Social rules are more general in nature. Social rules apply to situations and not to particular tasks (Siegal & McDonald Storey, 1985; Turiel, 1983). It was hypothesized that with development children's goal sketches become more fully developed and that they become more attuned to the social nature of the situation. Two studies were conducted to investigate the relationship between goal sketches and social rules. In Experiment 1, 144 first-, third-, and fifth-grade children participated in a memory task, followed by a ratings task for "helpful" of 8 different strategies to address goal sketches, and a ratings task for "breaking the rules" to address social rules. In Experiment 2, 96 first-, third-, and fifth-grade children participated in the same memory task in Experiment 1 for 10 trials then completed the ratings tasks. After completion of the ratings tasks, children returned to the memory task for an additional 5 trials. This allowed for the investigation of any changes in strategy use on post-ratings memory trials. The results of the current research suggest that strategy use is influenced by children's goal sketches for a task, but social rules often influence whether strategies are exhibited by children, especially for third and fifth graders.