A DEVELOPMENTAL STUDY OF HYPOTHESIS BEHAVIOR AND FOCUSING

Children from Grades 2, 4, 6, and 8 and introductory psychology students were administered eight 16-trial hypothesis testing problems. The stimuli and procedure closely followed those used by Levine (1966). The major findings were as follows: (a) Ss from all grade levels formulated and used hypotheses reliably; (b) the extent to which hypothesis behavior was manifested increased significantly with developmental level; (c) the ability to predict outcome-trial responses from the blank-trial responses was also significantly related to development; and (d) focusing or information processing ability was differentiated by age, although only for the blanktrial sequences after the second and third outcome trials. Further analyses of the age-related difference in the focusing functions revealed that the general effect due to development could be explained by age-related differences in such processes as coding, recoding, and the retention of stored outcome information. © 1969.