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The relationship between cognition and action: performance of children 3 1/2-7 years old on a Stroop-like day-night
C L Gerstadt1, Y J Hong, A Diamond
1Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 19104-6196.
Insights
Young children struggle with tasks requiring inhibitory control and remembering multiple rules. Performance improves with age, but younger children (< 4.5 years) need more time to respond accurately.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Development
- Developmental Psychology
- Childhood Cognition
Background:
- Inhibitory control and rule learning are crucial cognitive functions that develop throughout childhood.
- Understanding the specific demands that impair performance in young children is essential for developmental research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the cognitive demands of inhibitory control combined with learning and remembering two rules in young children.
- To differentiate the impact of inhibitory control from rule-learning complexity on task performance.
Main Methods:
- 160 children aged 3.5-7 years performed a task requiring saying 'day' to a moon/stars card and 'night' to a sun card.
- A control group of 80 children (3.5-5 years) learned to associate 'day' or 'night' with abstract designs.
- Performance was assessed by accuracy and response latency over 16 trials.
Main Results:
- Children younger than 5 years exhibited significant difficulty sustaining performance on the main task.
- Response latency decreased with age from 3.5 to 4.5 years.
- Children under 4.5 years performed well only when response times were very long.
- In the control condition, even the youngest children performed at a high level, indicating rule learning alone was not the primary difficulty.
Conclusions:
- The difficulty observed in younger children on the primary task is not solely attributable to the requirement of learning and remembering two rules.
- Inhibitory control of action, in conjunction with rule learning, presents a significant challenge for children under 5 years.
- Developmental trajectories of inhibitory control and working memory are critical for success in tasks with dual cognitive demands.
Abstract:
One hundred and sixty children 3 1/2-7 years of age (10 M, 10 F at each 6-month interval) were tested on a task that requires inhibitory control of action plus learning and remembering two rules. They were asked to say "day" whenever a black card with the moon and stars appeared and to say "night" when shown a white card with a bright sun. Children < 5 years had great difficulty. They started out performing well, but could not sustain this over the course of the 16-trial session. Response latency decreased from 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 years. Children < 4 1/2 years performed well when they took very long to respond. To test whether the requirement to learn and remember two rules alone was sufficient to cause children difficulty, 80 children 3 1/2-5 years old were tested on a control version of the task ("say 'day' to one abstract design and 'night' to another"). Even the youngest children performed at a high level. We conclude that the requirement to learn and remember two rules is not in itself sufficient to account for the poor performance of the younger children in the experimental condition.