Deciding What to Do: Developments in Children’s Spontaneous Monitoring of Cognitive Demands

Too easy, too hard, or just right: Lifespan age differences and gender effects on task difficulty choices

In everyday life, individuals often need to make choices about the difficulty level of tasks they wish to perform. Here, we investigate age- and gender-related differences in the monitoring of discrepancies between the difficulty of a given task and one’s own performance level, and in the likelihood to select task difficulties that match one’s performance level. Male and female children, teenagers, younger adults, and older adults (total N = 160) were asked to play a modified version of the BINGO game. Task difficulty was operationalized as the number of cards played simultaneously. We expected that (a) discrepancies between individuals’ self-selected difficulty levels and their objectively assessed maximum manageable task difficulty (MMTD) would be lowest in early adulthood; (b) children and teenagers, on average, would select relatively difficult task difficulties; and (c) males would overestimate their performance levels, on average, to a greater extent than females. As predicted, younger adults selected task difficulties closest to their MMTD. All other age groups, including older adults, chose task difficulties above their MMTD. The expected gender differences were restricted to children, with boys showing more pronounced performance overestimations than girls. Children and teenagers fluctuated more in their difficulty choices than adults, and many of them, especially boys, occasionally chose difficulty levels far beyond their performance capabilities. We conclude that task-difficulty choices are an interesting topic for lifespan studies. Future research should systematically vary the physical risk involved in a task, and also include the presence of peers.

Hearts, flowers, and fruits: All children need to reveal their post-error slowing

Slowing down responses after errors (i.e., post-error slowing [PES]) is an established finding in adults. Yet PES in young children is still not well understood. In this study, we investigated (a) whether young children show PES in tasks with different types of cognitive conflict and differing demands on executive functions, (b) whether PES is adaptive and efficient in the sense that it is associated with better task performance, and (c) whether PES correlates between tasks. We tested 4- to 6-year-old children on the Funny Fruits task (FF; n = 143), a Stroop-like task that incorporates semantic conflict and taxes children's inhibition skills, and the Hearts and Flowers task (HF; n = 170), which incorporates spatial conflict and taxes children's inhibition skills in its incongruent block and taxes both inhibition and cognitive flexibility (rule-switching) skills in its mixed block. A subgroup of children were tested on both FF and HF (n = 74). Results revealed that, first, children showed PES in FF and both blocks of HF, indicating that PES occurs in both types of conflict and under varying executive demands. Second, PES was associated with task accuracy, but only for FF and the mixed HF. Third, a between-task association in PES emerged only between FF and the mixed HF. Together, these findings indicate that PES is still a developing strategy in young children; it is present but only adaptive for, and correlates between, semantic inhibition and spatial flexibility.

Mini managers: Children strategically divide cognitive labor among collaborators, but with a self-serving bias

Strategic collaboration according to the law of comparative advantage involves dividing tasks based on the relative capabilities of group members. Three experiments (N = 405, primarily White and Asian, 45% female, collected 2016-2019 in Canada) examined how this strategy develops in children when dividing cognitive labor. Children divided questions about numbers between two partners. By 7 years, children allocated difficult questions to the skilled partner (Experiment 1, d = 1.42; Experiment 2, d = 0.87). However, younger children demonstrated a self-serving bias, choosing the easiest questions for themselves. Only when engaging in a third-party collaborative task did 5-year-olds assign harder questions to the more skilled individual (Experiment 3, d = 0.55). These findings demonstrate early understanding of strategic collaboration subject to a self-serving bias.

Executive Functions in Social Context: Implications for Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Supporting Developmental Trajectories

Success in life is linked to executive functions, a collection of cognitive processes that support goal-directed behaviors. Executive functions is an umbrella term related to cognitive control, self-control, and more. Variations in executive functioning predict concurrent success in schooling, relationships, and behavior, as well as important life outcomes years later. Such findings may suggest that certain individuals are destined for good executive functioning and success. However, environmental influences on executive function and development have long been recognized. Recent research in this tradition demonstrates the power of social contextual influences on children's engagement of executive functions. Such findings suggest new interpretations of why individuals differ in executive functioning and associated life outcomes, including across cultures and socioeconomic statuses. These findings raise fundamental questions about how best to conceptualize, measure, and support executive functioning across diverse contexts. Future research addressing real-world dynamics and computational mechanisms will elucidate how executive functioning emerges in the world.

Adaptiveness in proactive control engagement in children and adults

Age-related progress in cognitive control reflects more frequent engagement of proactive control during childhood. As proactive preparation for an upcoming task is adaptive only when the task can be reliably predicted, progress in proactive control engagement may rely on more efficient use of contextual cue reliability. Developmental progress may also reflect increasing efficiency in how proactive control is engaged, making this control mode more advantageous with age. To address these possibilities, 6-year-olds, 9-year-olds, and adults completed three versions of a cued task-switching paradigm in which contextual cue reliability was manipulated. When contextual cues were reliable (but not unreliable or uninformative), all age groups showed greater pupil dilation and a more pronounced (pre)cue-locked posterior positivity associated with faster response times, suggesting adaptive engagement of proactive task selection. However, adults additionally showed a larger contingent negative variation (CNV) predicting a further reduction in response times with reliable cues, suggesting motor preparation in adults but not children. Thus, early developing use of contextual cue reliability promotes adaptiveness in proactive control engagement from early childhood; yet, less efficient motor preparation in children makes this control mode overall less advantageous in childhood than adulthood.