Modality switching in children - is there an influence of modality compatibility?

Modality switching plays an important role in children's language processing. During everyday life, especially during school hours, spoken language is often supplemented by visual information, resulting in frequent switching between auditory and visual information processing, as well as between the production of vocal and manual motor responses. Previous studies with adults have shown that modality switching is influenced by modality compatibility. Specifically, switching between incompatible mappings (i.e., auditory-manual and visual-vocal) leads to impaired performance, as reflected in higher mixing and switch costs, compared to switching between compatible mappings (i.e., auditory-vocal and visual-manual). So far, however, data are limited to adults, and underlying cognitive mechanisms are still under debate. The present study contributes to a better understanding by providing the first data from children. In two experiments, children switched between compatible and incompatible modality mappings while deciding whether the presented pictures and tones (Experiment 1; N = 32; M_age = 8.4 years), or gestures and spoken words (Experiment 2; N = 32; M_age = 8.4 years), represent an animal or not by pressing a yes- or no-button, or saying "yes" or "no." Mixing costs were significantly higher for incompatible mappings than for compatible ones in both experiments. In contrast, switch costs were significantly influenced by modality compatibility in Experiment 2, but only marginally in Experiment 1. The results thus show that modality-specific effects on cognitive control processes already exist in childhood. Moreover, differences between the two experiments provide first evidence that these effects can vary depending on the type of input.