Reactive and proactive cognitive control as underlying processes of number processing in children

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Cognitive control is essential for managing task conflict.
• Two types of cognitive control exist: reactive (for rare conflict) and proactive (for frequent conflict).
• Previous research indicated these control types apply to adult number comparison.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if children utilize proactive and reactive control strategies in cognitive tasks.
• To determine if list-wide proportion congruency effects are present in children's performance on flanker and number comparison tasks.
• To assess if these effects differ across age groups (7, 9, and 11-year-olds).

Main Methods:

• Participants (7, 9, 11-year-olds) completed flanker and two-digit number comparison tasks.
• The proportion of conflict trials was manipulated (80% vs. 20%) within blocks.
• Reaction times and error rates were measured to assess cognitive control.

Main Results:

• A list-wide proportion congruency effect was observed in reaction times for the flanker task across all age groups.
• List-wide proportion congruency effects were found in both reaction times and error rates for the number comparison task.
• These effects in number comparison did not vary significantly with age.

Conclusions:

• Children from 7 years old can effectively employ both proactive and reactive cognitive control strategies.
• The findings demonstrate that cognitive control mechanisms are not limited to artificial lab tasks but extend to real-world tasks like number processing.
• This suggests a developmental consistency in the application of cognitive control strategies from early childhood.