Cue significance and response regulation in 3- to 6-year-old children's learning of multiple choice discrimination...

The learning of multiple choice discrimination tasks of 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-year-old children was compared using the components of learning of cue significance and response regulation. No significant differences between age groups were found in the occurrence of cue significance learning, although the younger children's cue significance responses were less accurately related to task solution. On the two easier tasks, the component of response regulation improved significantly over the age range of 3-5 years. On the two more difficult tasks 6-year-olds' response regulation was significantly better than that of 4- and 5-year-olds. In a second experiment involving two different training procedures, 5-year-olds performed better than 4-year-olds. Only for 5-year-olds was performance with the procedure emphasizing response regulation superior to performance with the procedure emphasizing cue significance. These results are discussed in terms of an association between development of response regulation and maturation of hippocampal-prefrontal cortex systems.