ABSTRACT
Planning has been defined as “the use of knowledge for a purpose, the construction of an effective way to meet some future goal” (Scholnick & Friedman, 1993, p. 145) and “goal-directed preparation for the future” (Lachman & Burack, 1993, p. 134). Much of the literature on the development of planning across the life span has focused on how individuals construct and execute plans in response to well-structured problems such as the Tower of Hanoi, mazes, and chess (see Friedman, Scholnick, & Cocking, 1987, for a review). More recently, investigators have become interested in the plans individuals construct in response to ill-structured everyday sorts of tasks such as errand running (Dreher & Oerter, 1987; Gauvain & Rogoff, 1989; B. Hayes-Roth & F. Hayes-Roth, 1979; Hudson & Fivush, 1991), party planning (e.g., Chalmers & Lawrence, 1993), and life planning (e.g., Smith & Baltes, 1990). What distinguishes many of these everyday problems from the well-structured problems often examined in planning is that the goal of the problem is unclear and there is no one correct means to achieve the goal (e.g., Meacham & Emont, 1989; Wood, 1983). With the inclusion of such everyday planning tasks, several researchers have noted that models of planning need to incorporate factors beyond those that are solely cognitive to include motivational, social, and environmental factors (Goodnow, 1987; Kreitler & Kreitler, 1987; Lachman & Burack, 1993; Rogoff, 1990).
