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Hearts, flowers, and fruits: All children need to reveal their post-error slowing
1Department of Psychology, University of Bern, 3012 Bern, Switzerland.
Insights
Young children exhibit post-error slowing (PES) across various cognitive tasks. However, this error-monitoring strategy is still developing and only partially adaptive in early childhood.
Area of Science:
- Developmental psychology
- Cognitive neuroscience
- Child development
Background:
- Post-error slowing (PES) is a known phenomenon in adults, reflecting response adjustments after errors.
- Understanding PES in young children is crucial for insights into developing executive functions.
- Previous research has not fully explored PES across different cognitive conflict types and executive demands in early childhood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the presence and characteristics of post-error slowing (PES) in young children (4-6 years old).
- To examine if PES is adaptive, correlating with improved task performance.
- To determine if PES is consistent across different cognitive tasks involving varying executive functions.
Main Methods:
- Children aged 4-6 years completed the Funny Fruits (FF) task (semantic conflict, inhibition) and the Hearts and Flowers (HF) task (spatial conflict, inhibition, flexibility).
- PES was calculated by comparing reaction times after errors versus correct responses.
- Correlations between PES across tasks and with task accuracy were analyzed.
Main Results:
- Children demonstrated PES in both the FF and HF tasks, indicating its presence across different conflict types and executive demands.
- PES was linked to better accuracy in the FF task and the mixed block of the HF task.
- A significant correlation in PES was found only between the FF task and the mixed block of the HF task.
Conclusions:
- Post-error slowing (PES) is present in young children but is a developing strategy.
- PES demonstrates partial adaptiveness, particularly in tasks requiring semantic inhibition and spatial flexibility.
- The findings highlight the nuanced development of error-monitoring and executive functions in early childhood.
Abstract:
Slowing down responses after errors (i.e., post-error slowing [PES]) is an established finding in adults. Yet PES in young children is still not well understood. In this study, we investigated (a) whether young children show PES in tasks with different types of cognitive conflict and differing demands on executive functions, (b) whether PES is adaptive and efficient in the sense that it is associated with better task performance, and (c) whether PES correlates between tasks. We tested 4- to 6-year-old children on the Funny Fruits task (FF; n = 143), a Stroop-like task that incorporates semantic conflict and taxes children's inhibition skills, and the Hearts and Flowers task (HF; n = 170), which incorporates spatial conflict and taxes children's inhibition skills in its incongruent block and taxes both inhibition and cognitive flexibility (rule-switching) skills in its mixed block. A subgroup of children were tested on both FF and HF (n = 74). Results revealed that, first, children showed PES in FF and both blocks of HF, indicating that PES occurs in both types of conflict and under varying executive demands. Second, PES was associated with task accuracy, but only for FF and the mixed HF. Third, a between-task association in PES emerged only between FF and the mixed HF. Together, these findings indicate that PES is still a developing strategy in young children; it is present but only adaptive for, and correlates between, semantic inhibition and spatial flexibility.
