Reported are studies attempting to describe the sorts of skills that toddlers need if they are to successfully complete intentional, or volitional, actions. A variety of tasks designed for children 15 to 35 months of age were administered; additional data were gathered that were relevant to the child's awareness of producing an outcome and…

A series of studies demonstrates that preschool, preoperational children deal effectively with tasks by anticipating the likelihood of their success and failure. They manifest these expectations in their behavior: in their decision time for making predictions, in the distributions of these predictions, and in their approach to particular tasks.…

An attempt was made to document the beginning of children's ability to make cognitive-emotional discriminations between skill-dependent outcomes and chance-dependent outcomes of performance on tasks. Children between the ages of 2 and 5 years were administered structurally similar achievement games and effect games. It was thought that as soon as…