{"doi":"10.31234/osf.io/a7dxp","title":"“Plan chunking” expands 3-year-olds’ ability to complete multiple-step plans","abstract":"The ability to use knowledge to guide the completion of goals is a critical cognitive skill, but 3-year-olds struggle to complete goals that require multiple steps. The current study asked whether 3-year-olds could benefit from “plan chunking” to complete multi-step goals. Thirty-two US children (range = 35.75-46.59 months; 18 girls; 9 white, 3 mixed race, 20 unknown; tested between July 2020 and April 2021) were asked to complete “treasure maps”, retrieving four colored map pieces by pressing specific buttons on a “rainbow box”. Children completed more of the four-step sequence correctly when the steps were presented in a way that encouraged chunking the steps into pairs. These findings suggest a potential mechanism supporting memory-guided planning abilities in early childhood.","journal":"OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints)","year":2023,"id":398836,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9564,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":749790,"name":"Melissa M. Kibbe","orcid":"0000-0002-9088-2523","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":546712,"name":"Tashauna L. Blankenship","orcid":"0000-0002-6649-8732","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":35,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:19:51.724387Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}