Compatibility Effects in Young Children's Tool Use: Learning and Transfer

An inherent component of tool-use actions is the transformation of the user's operating movement into the desired effect. In this study, the relevance of this transformation for young children's learning of tool-use actions was investigated. Sixty-four children at the age of 27-30 months learned to use levers which either simply extended (compatible transformation) or reversed (incompatible transformation) their operating movements. Data revealed a compatibility effect as well as transfer effects originating from the two different types of transformations. Furthermore, results suggest that young children's tool-use learning is not a uniform process, but has to be regarded individually depending on the type of transformation.

Early Executive Function: The Influence of Culture and Bilingualism

Evidence suggests that cultural experiences and learning multiple languages have measurable effects on children's cognitive development (EF). However, the precise impact of how bilingualism and culture contribute to observed effects remains inconclusive. The present study aims to investigate how these factors shape the development of early EF constructs longitudinally, between monolingual and bilingual children at ages 3, 3 ½ and 4 years, with a set of EF tasks that are uniquely relevant to the effects of bilingualism and cultural practices. We hypothesize that the effects of bilingualism and cultural backgrounds (i.e., Eastern) are based on different, though related, cognitive control processes associated with different EF constructs. Results revealed a significant bilingualism effect on cognitive control processes measuring selective attention, switching, and inhibition; while an effect of culture was most pronounced on behavioral regulation/response inhibition. Contributions of bilingualism and cultural experiences on individual EF constructs across development are discussed.

Young children can overcome their weak inhibitory control, if they conceptualize a task in the right way

This article investigates the process of task conceptualization, through which participants turn the instructions on a task into a mental representation of that task. We provide the first empirical evidence that this process of conceptualization can directly influence the inhibitory demands of a task. Data from Experiments 1 and 2 (both n = 24) suggested that robust difficulties on inhibitory tasks can be overcome if preschoolers conceptualize the tasks in a way that avoids the need for inhibitory control. Experiment 3 (n = 60) demonstrated that even when all other aspects of a task are identical, simply changing how the rules are introduced can influence whether such a conceptualization is adopted - thereby influencing children's performance on the task. An appreciation of the process of conceptualization is essential for our understanding of how inhibitory control and knowledge interact in early development.

Measuring the development of inhibitory control: The challenge of heterotypic continuity

Inhibitory control is thought to demonstrate heterotypic continuity, in other words, continuity in its purpose or function but changes in its behavioral manifestation over time. This creates major methodological challenges for studying the development of inhibitory control in childhood including construct validity, developmental appropriateness and sensitivity of measures, and longitudinal factorial invariance. We meta-analyzed 198 studies using measures of inhibitory control, a key aspect of self-regulation, to estimate age ranges of usefulness for each measure. The inhibitory control measures showed limited age ranges of usefulness owing to ceiling/floor effects. Tasks were useful, on average, for a developmental span of less than 3 years. This suggests that measuring inhibitory control over longer spans of development may require use of different measures at different time points, seeking to measure heterotypic continuity. We suggest ways to study the development of inhibitory control, with overlapping measurement in a structural equation modeling framework and tests of longitudinal factorial or measurement invariance. However, as valuable as this would be for the area, we also point out that establishing longitudinal factorial invariance is neither sufficient nor necessary for examining developmental change. Any study of developmental change should be guided by theory and construct validity, aiming toward a better empirical and theoretical approach to the selection and combination of measures.

When Do Children Understand "Opposite"?

PURPOSE

The aims of the present research were to determine (a) the age at which children with typical development understand the concept of opposite, (b) whether this is related to other cognitive abilities or experiences, and (c) whether there is early implicit understanding of the concept.

METHOD

Children (N = 204) between 3 and 5 years of age were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 experimental conditions in a novel opposite task. Children's language and working memory skills were assessed, and parents provided information about children's access to learning materials about opposites.

RESULTS

In the opposite task, 4- and 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, demonstrated acquisition of the concept of opposite. Children demonstrated this understanding only when asked for the "opposite" one, suggesting that antonymy was not made salient by stimulus properties alone. Children's accuracy was not significantly related to their language or working memory skills, to their child care experience, or to whether parents reported having books or games about opposites or playing opposite word games with children. Eye gaze analyses provided no evidence for early implicit understanding of the concept of opposite.

CONCLUSION

Children with typical development have a concept of opposite by 4 years of age.

Age-related trends of inhibitory control in Stroop-like big-small task in 3 to 12-year-old children and young adults

Inhibitory control is the ability to suppress competing, dominant, automatic, or prepotent cognitive processing at perceptual, intermediate, and output stages. Inhibitory control is a key cognitive function of typical and atypical child development. This study examined age-related trends of Stroop-like interference in 3 to 12-year-old children and young adults by administration of a computerized Stroop-like big-small task with reduced working memory demand. This task used a set of pictures displaying a big and small circle in black and included the same condition and the opposite condition. In the same condition, each participant was instructed to say "big" when viewing the big circle and to say "small" when viewing the small circle. In the opposite condition, each participant was instructed to say "small" when viewing the big circle and to say "big" when viewing the small circle. The opposite condition required participants to inhibit the prepotent response of saying the same, a familiar response to a perceptual stimulus. The results of this study showed that Stroop-like interference decreased markedly in children in terms of error rates and correct response time. There was no deterioration of performance occurring between the early trials and the late trials in the sessions of the day-night task. Moreover, pretest failure rate was relatively low in this study. The Stroop-like big-small task is a useful tool to assess the development of inhibitory control in young children in that the task is easy to understand and has small working memory demand.

The effect of delayed responding on Stroop-like task performance among preschoolers

Forty-four preschoolers completed 2 conditions of a Stroop-like procedure (e.g., saying "boat" for car and "car" for boat) that differed in whether a 3-s delay was imposed before responding. The test card was visible during the delay period for half of the children and occluded for the other children. Preschoolers' interference control was significantly improved in the delay condition. There was no difference between the two delay variants (test card visible or occluded). Children were more prone to interference as testing progressed regardless of whether the delay was present. These results suggest that delays effectively reduce interference by reducing the potency of the competing response during test trials, although memory demands may moderate the effectiveness of delays.

Refining the understanding of inhibitory processes: how response prepotency is created and overcome

Understanding (a) how responses become prepotent provides insights into when inhibition is needed in everyday life. Understanding (b) how response prepotency is overcome provides insights for helping children develop strategies for overcoming such tendencies. Concerning (a), on tasks such as the day-night Stroop-like task, is the difficulty with inhibiting saying the name of the stimulus due to the name being semantically related to the correct response or to its being a valid response on the task (i.e. a member of the response set) though incorrect for this stimulus? Experiment 1 (with 40 4-year-olds) suggests that prepotency is caused by membership in the response set and not semantic relation. Concerning (b), Diamond, Kirkham and Amso (2002) found that 4-year-olds could succeed on the day-night task if the experimenter sang a ditty after showing the stimulus card, before the child was to respond. They concluded that it was because delaying children's responses gave them time to compute the correct answer. However, Experiment 2 (with 90 3-year-olds) suggests that such a delay helps because it gives the incorrect, prepotent response time to passively dissipate, not because of active computation during the delay.