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Choice and goal-directed behavior in preschool children
Ulrike M H Klossek1, Shan Yu, Anthony Dickinson
1University of Cambridge, UK. umhk2@cam.ac.uk
Learning & Behavior
|April 22, 2011
Summary
Preschool children
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
- Behavioral Science
Background:
- Understanding how children learn and adapt their behavior based on outcomes is crucial.
- Dual-process theories suggest different mechanisms for automatic and controlled action.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how different training schedules affect preschool children's sensitivity to outcome value.
- To explore the role of concurrent versus separate training in action control.
Main Methods:
- Preschool children (3-4 years old) were trained on two actions yielding different cartoon video outcomes.
- One outcome was devalued through non-contingent exposure before a test phase.
- Action-outcome associations were trained either concurrently or separately across trials.
Main Results:
- When actions were trained concurrently, children preferred the action linked to the valued outcome.
- When actions were trained separately, children's choices were not influenced by outcome devaluation.
- Training schedule significantly modulated behavioral flexibility.
Conclusions:
- Concurrent training fosters goal-directed behavior sensitive to outcome value in young children.
- Separate training leads to less flexible action control, independent of outcome value.
- Findings support dual-process theories in explaining early action control development.
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