Developmental Changes In Switching Between Mental Task Sets: The Influence Of Verbal Labeling In Childhood

Validation of new tablet-based problem-solving tasks in primary school students

Problem-solving is an important skill that is associated with reasoning abilities, action control and academic success. Nevertheless, empirical evidence on cognitive correlates of problem-solving performance in childhood is limited. Appropriate assessment tools are scarce and existing analog tasks require extensive coding. Thus, we developed and validated new tablet-based versions of existing analog tasks assessing technical problem-solving with gear construction tasks. To validate these tasks, 215 children (6-8 years) performed the problem-solving tasks in both modalities (analog, digital). To investigate whether performances in both modalities were correlated with other cognitive abilities, participants performed three additional tasks assessing language, reasoning and problem-solving. Structural equation modelling showed that performance was substantially correlated across modalities and also correlated with language, reasoning and another problem-solving task, showing the convergent validity of the digital tasks. We also found scalar measurement invariance across task modalities indicating that both task versions can be used interchangeably. We conclude that both versions (analog and digital) draw on similar cognitive resources and abilities. The analog tasks were thus successfully transferred to a digital platform. The new tasks offer the immense benefits of digital data collection, provide a valid measuring tool advancing problem-solving research in childhood and facilitate the application in the field, e.g., in the classroom.

From terrible twos to sassy sixes: The development of vocabulary and executive functioning across early childhood

Across the early childhood period of development, young children exhibit considerable growth in their executive functioning (EF) and vocabulary abilities. Understanding the developmental trajectory of these seemingly interrelated processes is important as both early vocabulary and EF have been shown to predict critical academic and socio-emotional outcomes later in childhood. Although previous research suggests that EF and vocabulary are correlated in early childhood, much of the existing longitudinal research has focused on unidirectional relations among preschool child samples. The current large-scale study, therefore, sought to examine whether children's vocabulary and EF abilities are bidirectionally related over time across four measurement waves in early childhood (i.e., at ages 2, 3, 4, and 6). At each timepoint, children's vocabulary skills were positively correlated with their concurrent EF abilities. After controlling for child sex and maternal education status, the best-fitting, cross-lagged panel model was a unidirectional model whereby children's early vocabulary scores predicted their later EF performance at each timepoint. Although age 2 EF significantly predicted age 3 vocabulary size, this association was no longer significant after accounting for maternal education status. Our results illustrate that vocabulary size plays an important role in predicting children's later EF performance across various timepoints in early childhood, even after controlling for children's initial EF scores. These findings have important implications for intervention research as fostering early vocabulary acquisition may serve as a possible avenue for improving EF outcomes in young children. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Children's vocabulary size is positively correlated with their concurrent executive functioning skill at ages 2, 3, 4, and 6 Young children's early vocabulary scores predict their later EF performance across measurement waves, even after controlling for initial EF skill There is stability in children's relative vocabulary size and executive functioning performance over time in early childhood.

Inner Speech and Executive Function in Children With Developmental Language Disorder: Implications for Assessment and Intervention

Purpose

Many children with developmental language disorder (DLD) also have difficulty with executive function. The presence of co-occurring deficits in language and executive function can obscure assessment results and lead to the implementation of ineffective interventions. It is also the case that inner speech, or the use of self-directed language to guide thought and action, often mediates performance on executive function tasks. The aims of this tutorial are to (a) summarize what is known about how inner speech affects executive function performance in typical populations and children with DLD and (b) highlight potential implications for clinical practice and directions for future research. We provide a brief background on inner speech, including theoretical frameworks, typical development, and measurement approaches. We then summarize research on inner speech and executive function involving typical adults and children, followed by a description of the few studies involving children with DLD.

Conclusions

Work with typical adults and children has concluded that inner speech operates as a self-cueing device to support understanding of task rules, sequencing of task order, and maintenance of task goals. Work involving children with DLD suggests that their inner speech is less mature, less relevant, and less effective overall when completing executive function tasks. However, very few studies have examined the relations between inner speech and executive function in children with DLD. It is important for speech-language pathologists to understand the potential role of inner speech during executive function tasks, given how often these skills are utilized during everyday activities. Although more research is needed, speech-language pathologists are in a unique position to support both language and executive function goals for children with DLD.

Developmental differences in processing the valence and magnitude of incentive cues: Mid-adolescents are more sensitive to potential gains than early- or late-adolescents

Recent research has focused on the interaction between motivation and cognitive control and shown that both are important for goal-directed behavior. There also is evidence for developmental differences in the sensitivity and behavioral effectiveness of incentives, showing that mid-adolescents might be especially susceptible to rewards. Further pursuing this line of research, the present study examined developmental differences in incentive processing and whether these potential differences also would correspond to changes in cognitive control. We compared the processing of high and low potential gains and losses in early-, mid-, and late adolescents by means of event-related potentials (ERPs) and examined whether these incentives also led to specific performance differences in task-switching. We expected that potential gains compared to potential losses and high compared to low incentives would lead to more preparatory updating as reflected in the P3b and consequently to better task performance and smaller global and local switch costs as indicators of cognitive control in all age groups. Furthermore, we expected that mid-adolescents should be especially sensitive to high gains and thus show the most pronounced enhancements in task performance and global and local switch costs in trials with high gains, respectively. Our results corroborate the idea of a special sensitivity to high rewards during mid-adolescence. The analysis of ERPs showed age-related differences in the processing of incentive cues that also varied with cognitive control demands. However, the different incentives did not impact age-related differences in indices of cognitive control, but had a general effect on response speed.

Investigating Cognitive Flexibility in Preschool Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

The current study investigated cognitive flexibility in preschool children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and those with typical development using the Reverse Categorization (RC) task and the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) task. We further examined the relationship between non-verbal mental age (NVMA) and the performance on the two tasks. While no significant difference in performance on the RC task between the two groups was found, significantly more children in the typical developing group passed the DCCS task than children in the ASD group. NVMA was found to correlate with performance in both tasks in the typical developing group but not in the ASD group. When the children were matched on NVMA, no differences in task performance between the two groups were found. The current study found the disparity in performance in two groups on the RC and the DCCS tasks, hence illuminating the importance related to the selection of tasks when studying cognitive flexibility in preschool children with ASD. The study also cast some light on the involvement of NVMA in the performance on the RC and DCCS tasks.

Prior task experience increases 5-year-old children's use of proactive control: Behavioral and pupillometric evidence

Children engage cognitive control reactively when they encounter conflicts; however, they can also resolve conflicts proactively. Recent studies have begun to clarify the mechanisms that support the use of proactive control in children; nonetheless, sufficient knowledge has not been accumulated regarding these mechanisms. Using behavioral and pupillometric measures, we tested the novel possibility that 5-year-old children (N = 58) learn to use proactive control via the acquisition of abstract task knowledge that captures regularities of the task. Participants were assigned to either a proactive training group or a control training group. In the proactive training group, participants engaged in a training phase where using proactive control was encouraged, followed by a test phase using different stimuli where both proactive and reactive control could be used. In the control training group, participants engaged in a training phase where both cognitive control strategies could be used, followed by a similarly-structured test phase using different stimuli. We demonstrated children in the control training group responded more quickly and accurately and showed greater cue-related pupil dilation in the test phase than in the training phase. However, there were no differences in response times, accuracies, and pupil dilation between the proactive and control training groups in the training and test phases. These findings suggest that prior task experience, that goes beyond specific knowledge about the timing of task goal activation, can lead children to engage more proactive control endogenously, even if they are not directly encouraged to do so.

Preschoolers are capable of fine-grained implicit cognitive control: Evidence from development of the context-specific proportion congruency effect

Whereas much of the developmental literature has focused on the difficulties of young children in regulating their behavior, an increasing base of evidence suggests that children may be capable of surprisingly flexible engagement of cognitive control when based on implicit experience with the situation. One of the most fine-grained examples of implicit cognitive control in adults is the context-specific proportion congruency (CSPC) effect-the finding that interference in a conflict task is reduced for stimuli that are presented in a context (e.g., a spatial location) where stimuli are generally incongruent. Can such a subtle modulation of control be observed in children? In Experiment 1 (N = 180), we showed that this effect exists in preschoolers for two different types of context manipulation and that its magnitude is at least as large as in older children. In Experiment 2 (N = 40), we confirmed that the effect transfers to unbiased stimuli, indicating that it is not attributable to contingency learning of stimulus-response associations and can be taken to actually reflect cognitive control. These results support the possibility that implicit cognitive control (implemented without explicit intentions and without requiring subject awareness) can be functionally distinct from explicit control and that even very young children can implement fine-grained cognitive control when it is based on implicit cues.

Age-related differentiation in verbal and visuospatial working memory processing in childhood

Working memory (WM), a key feature of the cognitive system, allows for maintaining and processing information simultaneously and in a controlled manner. WM processing continuously develops across childhood, with significant increases both in verbal and visuospatial WM. Verbal and visuospatial WM may show different developmental trajectories, as verbal (but not visuospatial) WM relies on internal verbal rehearsal, which is less developed in younger children. We examined complex VWM and VSWM performance in 125 younger (age 4-6 years) and 101 older (age 8-10 years) children. Latent multi-group modeling showed that (1) older children performed better on both verbal and visuospatial WM span tasks than younger children, (2) both age groups performed better on verbal than visuospatial WM, and (3) a model with two factors representing verbal and visuospatial WM fit the data better than a one-factor model. Importantly, the correlation between the two factors was significantly higher in younger than in older children, suggesting an age-related differentiation of verbal and spatial WM processing in middle childhood. Age-related differentiation is an important characteristic of cognitive functioning and thus the findings contribute to our general understanding of WM processing.

Two-year-olds' executive functioning: The influence of task-specific vocabulary knowledge

Although many executive function (EF) tasks require only nonverbal responses, the language used by experimenters to explain the task may be important for young children's EF task performance. This study investigated how the vocabulary used in explaining an EF task affects 2-year-olds' performance. Experiment 1 used the standard instructions for the Reverse Categorization Task, in which children are asked to sort different-sized blocks into different-sized buckets according to one rule and then switch to a new rule. In Experiment 2, the task remained the same, but different instructions requiring less knowledge of size words were used. Children's productive vocabulary was assessed in both experiments but was only correlated with task performance in Experiment 1. These results suggest that task-specific vocabulary knowledge may play a role in children's performance on tasks designed to measure nonverbal cognitive ability.

Evidencing the developmental shift from reactive to proactive control in early childhood and its relationship to working memory

As they age, children tend to get more effective at regulating their behavior in complex situations; this improvement in cognitive control is often interpreted as a shift from predominantly reactive control to proactive control. There are three issues with this interpretation. First, hard evidence is lacking that younger children actually rely on reactive control. Second, the precise age range when such a shift would occur is still unclear. Third, the reasons for this shift have not been explored. In the current study, we tested the hypothesis that children under 5 years of age do rely on reactive control, that they progressively shift to proactive control with age, and that this shift is related to increases in working memory capacity (which is necessary for proactive control). Children aged 4 to 7 years performed a cognitive control task, the AX-CPT (AX-Continuous Performance Task), as well as verbal and visuospatial working memory tasks. Using the paradigmatic AX-CPT in this age range allowed us to observe, for the first time, an actual reactive pattern in children under 5 years of age. There was a progressive shift from reactive control to proactive control, with an estimated turning point between 5 and 6 years of age. The effect of age on proactive control was essentially shared with working memory capacity, confirming that these two cognitive processes develop in tandem.

Using language to get ready: Familiar labels help children engage proactive control

A key developmental transition is the ability to engage executive functions proactively in advance of needing them. We tested the potential role of linguistic processes in proactive control. Children completed a task in which they could proactively track a novel (target) shape on a screen as it moved unpredictably amid novel distractors and needed to identify where it disappeared. Children almost always remembered which shape to track, but those who learned familiar labels for the target shapes before the task had nearly twice the odds of tracking the target compared with those who received experience with the targets but no labels. Children who learned labels were also more likely to spontaneously vocalize labels when the target appeared. These findings provide the first evidence of a causal role for linguistic processes in proactive control and suggest new ideas about how proactive control develops, why language supports a variety of executive functions, and how interventions might best be targeted.

Development and Plasticity of Cognitive Flexibility in Early and Middle Childhood

Cognitive flexibility, the ability to flexibly switch between tasks, is a core dimension of executive functions (EFs) allowing to control actions and to adapt flexibly to changing environments. It supports the management of multiple tasks, the development of novel, adaptive behavior and is associated with various life outcomes. Cognitive flexibility develops rapidly in preschool and continuously increases well into adolescence, mirroring the growth of neural networks involving the prefrontal cortex. Over the past decade, there has been increasing interest in interventions designed to improve cognitive flexibility in children in order to support the many developmental outcomes associated with cognitive flexibility. This article provides a brief review of the development and plasticity of cognitive flexibility across early and middle childhood (i.e., from preschool to elementary school age). Focusing on interventions designed to improve cognitive flexibility in typically developing children, we report evidence for significant training and transfer effects while acknowledging that current findings on transfer are heterogeneous. Finally, we introduce metacognitive training as a promising new approach to promote cognitive flexibility and to support transfer of training.

Do 5-Year-Old Children Perform Dual-Task Coordination Better Than AD Patients?

OBJECTIVE

A cross-sectional study was carried out to examine the pattern of changes in the capacity to coordinate attention between two simultaneously performed tasks in a group of 570 volunteers, from 5 to 17 years old.

METHOD

The results revealed that the ability to coordinate attention increases with age, reaching adult values by age 15 years. Also, these results were compared with the performance in the same dual task of healthy elderly and Alzheimer disease (AD) patients found in a previous study.

RESULTS

The analysis indicated that AD patients showed a lower dual-tasking capacity than 5-year-old children, whereas the elderly presented a significantly higher ability than 5-year-old children and no significant differences with respect to young adults.

CONCLUSION

These findings may suggest the presence of a working memory system's mechanism that enables the division of attention, which is strengthened by the maturation of prefrontal cortex, and impaired in AD.

Impact of Reminders on Children's Cognitive Flexibility, Intrinsic Motivation, and Mood Depends on Who Provides the Reminders

Reminding children to think about alternatives is a strategy adults often use to promote children's cognitive flexibility, as well as children's engagement in and enjoyment of the task. The current study investigated whether the impacts of reminders on kindergarten children's cognitive flexibility, intrinsic motivation, and mood are moderated by who provides the reminders. Eighty-three healthy 5-year-old kindergarten children were randomly assigned to 2 (Reminder: no reminders vs. Reminders) × 2 (Agent: Tester vs. Partner) conditions. Children's cognitive flexibility was measured via the Block Sorting Task (Garton and Pratt, 2001; Fawcett and Garton, 2005). Children reported their motivation and mood before Block Sorting, after practicing for Block Sorting, and after the actual Block Sorting. Children's intrinsic motivation was measured by evaluating children's choices during a period of free play after Block Sorting. The results revealed that, depending on who provides the reminders, reminding children of alternatives can influence kindergarten children's performance on Block Sorting, children's intrinsic motivation, and children's self-reported mood.

Executive Function Development

Emerging executive function in childhood, one of the main predictors of major life success, is goal-directed in nature. Yet children’s ability to identify goals (i.e., what should be done) has been underresearched, often because of implicit assumptions that it is trivial even in early childhood. In contrast, I review evidence for goal identification as a major force behind developing executive function. Both increasing attention to environmental cues and increased goal inferencing from these cues drive goal-identification improvement with age. This framework has important implications for assessing and supporting executive function in childhood.

Metacognitive processes in executive control development: the case of reactive and proactive control

Young children engage cognitive control reactively in response to events, rather than proactively preparing for events. Such limitations in executive control have been explained in terms of fundamental constraints on children's cognitive capacities. Alternatively, young children might be capable of proactive control but differ from older children in their metacognitive decisions regarding when to engage proactive control. We examined these possibilities in three conditions of a task-switching paradigm, varying in whether task cues were available before or after target onset. RTs, ERPs, and pupil dilation showed that 5-year-olds did engage in advance preparation, a critical aspect of proactive control, but only when reactive control was made more difficult, whereas 10-year-olds engaged in proactive control whenever possible. These findings highlight metacognitive processes in children's cognitive control, an understudied aspect of executive control development.

Language and the development of cognitive control

We review the relationships between language, inner speech, and cognitive control in children and young adults, focusing on the domain of cognitive flexibility. We address the role that inner speech plays in flexibly shifting between tasks, addressing whether it is used to represent task rules, provide a reminder of task order, or aid in task retrieval. We also consider whether the development of inner speech in childhood serves to drive the development of cognitive flexibility. We conclude that there is a close association between inner speech and cognitive flexibility in both adults and children. Experimental work has begun to specify in detail the role that inner speech might play in adult performance, suggesting that language plays a facilitative but not essential role in representing and activating the relevant task set, processes that occur on both switch and nonswitch trials. While developmental studies suggest an increase in the spontaneous use of verbal strategies with age, implying an increase in top-down control during shifting, experimental work is needed to specify more precisely the nature and precise role that inner speech plays in the development of cognitive control through childhood.

Age-related changes in the temporal dynamics of executive control: a study in 5- and 6-year-old children

Based on the Dual Mechanisms of Control theory (Braver et al., 2007), this study conducted in 5- and 6-year-olds, tested for a possible shift between two modes of control, proactive vs. reactive, which differ in the way goal information is retrieved and maintained in working memory. To this end, we developed a children-adapted version of the AX-Continuous-Performance Task (AX-CPT). Twenty-nine 5-year-olds and 28-6-year-olds performed the task in both low and high working-memory load conditions (corresponding, respectively, to a short and a long cue-probe delay). Analyses suggested that a qualitative change in the mode of control occurs within the 5-year-old group. However, quantitative, more graded changes were also observed both within the 5-year-olds, and between 5 and 6 years of age. These graded changes demonstrated an increasing efficiency in proactive control with age. The increase in working memory load did not impact the type of dynamics of control, but had a detrimental effect on sensitivity to cue information. These findings highlight that the development of the temporal dynamics of control can be characterized by a shift from reactive to proactive control together with a more protracted and gradual improvement in the efficiency of proactive control. Moreover, the question of whether the observed shift in the mode of control is task dependant is debated.

Executive control training from middle childhood to adolescence

Executive functions (EFs) include a number of higher-level cognitive control abilities, such as cognitive flexibility, inhibition, and working memory, which are instrumental in supporting action control and the flexible adaptation changing environments. These control functions are supported by the prefrontal cortex and therefore develop rapidly across childhood and mature well into late adolescence. Given that executive control is a strong predictor for various life outcomes, such as academic achievement, socioeconomic status, and physical health, numerous training interventions have been designed to improve executive functioning across the lifespan, many of them targeting children and adolescents. Despite the increasing popularity of these trainings, their results are neither robust nor consistent, and the transferability of training-induced performance improvements to untrained tasks seems to be limited. In this review, we provide a selective overview of the developmental literature on process-based cognitive interventions by discussing (1) the concept and the development of EFs and their neural underpinnings, (2) the effects of different types of executive control training in normally developing children and adolescents, (3) individual differences in training-related performance gains as well as (4) the potential of cognitive training interventions for the application in clinical and educational contexts. Based on recent findings, we consider how transfer of process-based executive control trainings may be supported and how interventions may be tailored to the needs of specific age groups or populations.

So many options, so little control: abstract representations can reduce selection demands to increase children's self-directed flexibility

Children often struggle to behave flexibly when they must use self-directed goals (e.g., doing homework without prompting) rather than externally driven goals (e.g., cleaning up when told). Such struggles may reflect the demands of selecting among many potential options, as required for self-directed control. The current study tested whether (a) 6-year-old children show difficulty in selecting among competing semantic representations, (b) providing category labels designed to reduce selection demands improves performance, and (c) such benefits transfer to self-directed flexibility. Selection was measured using the blocked cyclic naming task for the first time with children. Pictures were named repeatedly in either homogeneous blocks from the same category (e.g., all animals), which create high selection demands due to spreading semantic activation and engage effortful cognitive control, or mixed blocks with each picture from a different category. Children showed robust difficulty in selecting among options, as indexed by response time (RT) differences between homogeneous and mixed blocks. Providing subcategory labels designed to reduce selection demands by distinguishing among same-category items (e.g., "A cow is a farm animal. A cat is a pet.") improved selection. Providing superordinate categories (e.g., "A cow is an animal. A cat is an animal.") also improved selection, but these benefits were less robust, and subcategory labels led to greater benefits than superordinate category labels on a subsequent verbal fluency task. These results support a role for subcategory representations in reducing selection demands to aid self-directed flexibility while suggesting that some children may use superordinate category labels to activate subcategory representations on their own.

Effects of strategy sequences and response-stimulus intervals on children's strategy selection and strategy execution: a study in computational estimation

The present study investigates how children's better strategy selection and strategy execution on a given problem are influenced by which strategy was used on the immediately preceding problem and by the duration between their answer to the previous problem and current problem display. These goals are pursued in the context of an arithmetic problem solving task. Third and fifth graders were asked to select the better strategy to find estimates to two-digit addition problems like 36 + 78. On each problem, children could choose rounding-down (i.e., rounding both operands down to the closest smaller decades, like doing 40 + 60 to solve 42 + 67) or rounding-up strategies (i.e., rounding both operands up to the closest larger decades, like doing 50 + 70 to solve 42 + 67). Children were tested under a short RSI condition (i.e., the next problem was displayed 900 ms after participants' answer) or under a long RSI condition (i.e., the next problem was displayed 1,900 ms after participants' answer). Results showed that both strategy selection (e.g., children selected the better strategy more often under long RSI condition and after selecting the poorer strategy on the immediately preceding problem) and strategy execution (e.g., children executed strategy more efficiently under long RSI condition and were slower when switching strategy over two consecutive problems) were influenced by RSI and which strategy was used on the immediately preceding problem. Moreover, data showed age-related changes in effects of RSI and strategy sequence on mean percent better strategy selection and on strategy performance. The present findings have important theoretical and empirical implications for our understanding of general and specific processes involved in strategy selection, strategy execution, and strategic development.

Bottom-up and top-down dynamics in young children's executive function: Labels aid 3-year-olds' performance on the Dimensional Change Card Sort

Executive function (EF) improves between the ages of 3 and 5 and has been assessed reliably using the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS), a task in which children first sort bivalent cards by one dimension (e.g., shape) and then are instructed to sort by a different dimension (e.g., color). Three-year-olds typically perseverate on the pre-switch dimension, whereas 5-year-olds switch flexibly. Labeling task stimuli can facilitate EF performance (Jacques & Zelazo, 2005; Kirkham, Cruess, & Diamond, 2003), but the nature of this effect is unclear. In 3 experiments we examined 2 hypotheses deriving from different theoretical perspectives: first, that labels facilitate performance in a more bottom-up fashion, by biasing attention to relevant task rules (Kirkham et al., 2003); and second, that labels aid performance in a more top-down fashion by prompting reflection and an understanding of the hierarchical nature of the task (Zelazo, 2004). Children performed better on the DCCS when labels referred to the relevant sorting dimension (Experiment 1). This was a function of the content of the labels rather than the change in auditory signal across phases (Experiment 2). Furthermore, labeling the opposite dimension only did not have a symmetrically negative effect on performance (Experiment 3). Together, these results suggest external, verbal labels bias children to attend to task-relevant information, likely through interaction with emerging top-down, endogenous control.

Differential effects of articulatory suppression on cue-switch and task-switch trials in random task cueing with 2:1 mapping

Recent studies have revealed that verbal representations play an important role in various task-switching situations. This study examined whether verbal representations contribute to the actual switching process using random task cueing with two cues per task. This procedure allowed us to produce a trial in which the cue switched, but the task repeated, thereby separating the cue-switching process from the actual task-switching process. Participants performed colour or shape judgements that were initiated by an arbitrary symbol cue (Experiments 1 and 2) or a kanji cue (Experiment 3) under control, articulatory-suppression, and foot-tapping conditions. In Experiments 1 and 2 with the arbitrary cues, articulatory suppression impaired performance in only the cue-switch condition. In Experiment 3, in which a kanji cue indicated the upcoming task name, articulatory suppression did not have any effects. These results suggest that the involvement of verbal representations in random task cueing is based on the cue-switching process rather than on the task-switching process.

The influence of stimulus-set size on developmental changes in cognitive control and conflict adaptation

Cognitive control abilities substantially improve from early childhood to adulthood. The primary aim of this study was to examine the influence of stimulus-set size on developmental changes in cognitive control abilities such as task switching, interference control, and conflict adaptation. We assumed that a small stimulus set used in a task-switching paradigm would induce stronger task-stimulus priming that might increase the need for control, thereby amplifying age differences in cognitive control abilities. Therefore, we compared task-switching performance in a group of participants responding to a small stimulus-set (N=4) with a group responding to a large stimulus-set (N=96) in three age groups: kindergarten children (4.1-6.0 years of age), elementary school children (6.1-9.0 years of age), and young adults (21.0-28.0 years of age) on conflicting vs. non-conflicting trials (interference control) and following conflicting vs. non-conflicting trials (conflict adaptation). Results on the basis of error rates support the view that a small stimulus-set size during task switching (i.e., larger task-stimulus priming) increases the need for control as we found (a) worse conflict adaptation on task-repetition trials only for small but not for large set sizes and (b) larger interference costs under small than large set-size condition for elementary school children as compared with young adults. Kindergarten children were less sensitive to the set-size manipulation and showed major problems in interference control while being in a task-switching situation, even if no actual task switch was required, possibly reflecting their inability to represent complex higher-order task rules.

Action-effect learning in early childhood: does language matter?

Previous work showed that language has an important function for the development of action control. This study examined the role of verbal processes for action-effect learning in 4-year-old children. Participants performed an acquisition phase including a two-choice key-pressing task in which each key press (action) was followed by a particular sound (effect). Children were instructed to either (1) label their actions along with the corresponding effects, (2) verbalize task-irrelevant words, (3) or perform without verbalization. In a subsequent test phase, they responded to the same sound effects either under consistent or under inconsistent sound-key mappings. Evidence for action-effect learning was obtained only if action and effects were labeled or if no verbalization was performed, but not if children verbalized task-irrelevant labels. Importantly, action-effect learning was most pronounced when children verbalized the actions and the corresponding effects, suggesting that task-relevant verbal labeling supports the integration of event representations.

The development of anticipatory cognitive control processes in task-switching: an ERP study in children, adolescents, and young adults

To investigate the development of advance task-set updating and reconfiguration, behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) data were recorded in children (9-10 years), adolescents (13-14 years), and young adults (20-27 years) in a cued task-switching paradigm. In pure blocks, the same task was repeated. In mixed blocks, comprised of stay and switch trials, two tasks were intermixed. Age differences were found for stay-pure performance (mixing costs) in the 600-ms but not in the 1200-ms cue-target interval (CTI). Children showed larger reaction time mixing costs than adults. The ERPs suggested that the larger costs were due to delayed anticipatory task-set updating in children. Switch-stay performance decrements (switch costs) were age-invariant in both CTIs. However, ERP data suggested that children reconfigured the task-set on some stay trials, rather than only on switch trials, suggesting the continued maturation of task-set reconfiguration processes.

The development of selective inhibitory control: the influence of verbal labeling

The role of language in the development of selective inhibitory control was examined in four groups: Children aged 7-9 years, children aged 11-13 years, adults aged 20-27 years, and adults aged 62-76 years. We used a modified stop-signal task in which participants inhibited or executed responses based on a visual signal. Response execution and inhibition were assessed by measurement of reaction times (RTs) and error rates to a go signal and RTs to a stop signal. Four task variations were compared in which subjects named (1) the stimulus, (2) the intended action (go/stop), (3) something irrelevant, or (4) nothing. Results showed different developmental trends for response execution and inhibition across the lifespan. Moreover, response execution was faster and more accurate when subjects named the stimulus instead of the intended action. The increase in response accuracy when naming the stimulus was greatest for children. In contrast to expectations, naming the intended action did not influence response inhibition. Overall, these findings suggest that verbal labeling supports the initiation but not the inhibition of actions.