ABSTRACT
Planning can be a challenging cognitive task, involving complex problem solving, the prioritizing and sequencing of multiple activities, and the coordination of anticipated actions with constraints imposed by context, time, and resources. Analyses of planning and its development have tended to focus on cognitive abilities and corresponding changes in skills, strategies, and knowledge with age. This research has been useful in identifying the cognitive prerequisites for effective planning. Accordingly, it placed relatively less emphasis on the factors that influence when an individual will actually employ the planning skills in his or her cognitive repertoire. Recent analyses of the expression of planning behavior, however, suggest that the search for factors that influence, for example, the decision to plan or the revision of a plan in the face of obstacles, extends beyond cognition, to include other aspects of the individual, such as emotion, motivation, and personality, as well as features of the task and social context (Scholnick & Friedman, 1993).
