Klaczynski, Laipple, and Jurden (1992) studied practical cognition among adolescents in college-preparatory or vocational-training tracks. Depending on the chosen developmental life-track, adolescents in the two groups differed in their interpretation of practical problem situations. In particular, vocational students were concerned primarily with goals involving the acquisition of adult status, such as marriage, steady employment, and independence. College-preparatory students, on the other hand, reported more achievement-oriented goals, such as doing well in school, gaining admission to quality colleges, and scoring well on entrance exams.

Belief in the plasticity and fluidity of human developmental goals throughout the life span is also reflected by the notion that there is no single outcome or endpoint to cognitive development in general, or to the development of practical cognition in particular (e.g., Rogoff, 1982). The implication of this line of reasoning is that the individual and his or her context form a complex systemic unit; changes in the unit shape the content, dynamics, and adaptability of the individual's cognitive functioning in specific contexts. Thus, there is no "ideal" trajectory of cognitive development, and there is no optimal instrument assessing cognitive functioning equally well at all periods of the life span.

1.2.4 Practical problem-solving strategies

One of the main research trajectories in the field of practical cognition focuses on strategies utilized in problem solving. Among the central characteristics of strategies discussed in the research literature of the past 20 years (Belmont and Butterfield, 1969; Berg, 1989; Brown, 1975; Flavell, 1970; Naus and Ornstein, 1983; Pressley, Forest-Pressley, Faust and Miller, 1985) are selectivity, goal-directedness, and intentionality. Many developmental researchers have been especially interested in strategy selection as both an individual and a developmental indicator of everyday problem-solving performance (e.g., Frederiksen, 1986; Frederiksen, Jensen, and Beaton, 1972; Lazarus and Folkman, 1984).

Most of the early developmental work on everyday problem solving has been carried out under the assumption that individuals' chosen strategies can be compared irrespective of the developmental variation in the goals motivating these strategies (Band and Weisz, 1988; Berg, 1989; Cornelius and Caspi, 1987; Folkman et al., 1987). The major theoretical hypothesis dominating the field is that greater experience with everyday problems leads to better problem solving (Baltes et al., 1984, Denney, 1982). This claim assumes that a particular type of strategy—e.g., primary control reflected in independent coping and problem-focused action—is a more effective way of dealing with various problems than is some other strategy—e.g., secondary control reflected in reliance on others and emotion-focused action (Denney, 1989; Folkman et al., 1987). For example, self-action was the strategy most frequently mentioned across all ages in a study of reported everyday problems (Berg, Strough, Calderone, Sansone, and Weir, 1998). Problem-focused action was most frequently mentioned for hypothetical problems (Blanchard-Fields, Jahnke, and Camp, 1995). Developmental differences have been encountered, suggesting that secondary control strategies, emotion-focused strategies, and dependence on others increases across early childhood (Band and Weisz, 1988), with further elevation in later adulthood (Brandtstaedter and Greve, 1994; Denney and Palmer, 1981; Folkman et al., 1987; Heckhausen and Schultz, 1995). For instance, researchers (Band and Weisz, 1988) found that older children were more likely to use secondary control strategies, such as efforts to modify the subjective psychological state of the self to better suit the present conditions of the problem, whereas younger children were more likely to use primary control strategies, such as efforts to influence the problem so that it meets the problem solver's expectations.