Change is hard: Individual differences in children's lexical processing and executive functions after a shift in...

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Language comprehension relies on both language-specific and general cognitive abilities.
• Executive functions (EFs), or cognitive control, are domain-general abilities supporting language comprehension, particularly in resolving ambiguity.
• The role of EFs in language processing without ambiguity is not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether executive functions (EFs) are engaged during speech comprehension in the absence of ambiguity.
• To explore the relationship between predictability in language processing and children's executive functions.

Main Methods:

• Behavioral tasks measured different components of executive functions (EFs).
• An eye-tracking procedure assessed language comprehension in 56 five-year-old children.
• Children identified objects using names or colors, with a focus on predictability and dimensional shifts.

Main Results:

• Children showed decreased accuracy in fixating target objects when the identifying dimension changed, indicating issues with predictability, not shifting.
• This decrease in accuracy was linked to individual differences in children's executive functions.
• Predictability challenges in language comprehension were associated with EFs.

Conclusions:

• Executive functions (EFs) may be broadly involved in children's language comprehension, extending beyond conflict resolution.
• Predictability, a key aspect of language processing, engages executive functions even without ambiguity.
• Individual differences in EFs influence how children handle predictability in language comprehension.