Development Of Children's Ability-judgments In Academic Area

Children's ability-judgment has been an attractive area that has driven much ofthe research since 1950s, with three aspects contained. First, the definition of ability;second, the assessment of ability and third, the significant implications of ability. Boththe young and older children defined ability as smartness, with young childrenreferring to comments that social behaviors and traits were crucial, while olderchildren only tended including academic behaviors and traits as of the mostsignificance. Some evidence also indicated that the young children simply interpretedothers' behavior in terms of an undifferentiated "good-bad" dimension. Thus, a greatmany of researchers concluded that young children were not capable of distinguishingbetween ability and social traits. Whereas there were some evidence that children asyoung as 4-year-old could use differentiated traits to interpret others' behavior. Whencould children distinguish between academic ability and social traits and how couldchildren make judgment of one's ability? The above questions are worth to beconcerned. On the basis of these facets, three related studies were presented followingthe purposes set forth in the research.In study I, the developmental trends of 4-10-year-old children's differentiation ofacademic ability and social trait were investigated, by requiring the children to chooseacademic partners and activity partners from their classmates freely.In study II, developmental tends of 4-10-year-old children's differentiation ofacademic ability and social trait were investigated, by requiring the children to chooseacademic partners and activity partners from the two characters offered.In study III, the developmental changes of 4-10-year-old children's judgment ofdifficulty and ability as well as of effort, outcome and ability were investigated byindividual interviews.The main findings from the above three studies are as follows:1,Children as young as 4 had developed the differentiation between ability andsocial trait, under the conditions of choosing academic partners and activity partnersfrom their classmates freely.2,At all ages, children typically referred to academic abilities to explainteammate choices for the academic contest and to social traits or friendship to explainplaymate choices.3,Both the young and older children could differentiate ability and social trait,under the conditions of choosing academic partners and activity partners from the twocharacters offered.4,children's objective difficulty concept developed earlier than normativedifficulty concept.5,Children who didn't understand normative difficulty chose the normativelyeasiest task more often than those who understood normative difficulty.6,Children as young as 4 were sensitive to the perceived difficulty when makingjudgment of ability. They judged a child who found a task easy to be smarter than onewho found the same task hard. The older children were also capable of reasoningabout ability in relation to perceived difficulty.7,with age, children could integrate the relationship among effort, outcome andability. Ability could be correctly inferred from effort and outcome.