Young children who abandon error behaviourally still have to free themselves mentally: a retrospective test for inhibition in intuitive physics.
When preschoolers overcome persistent error, subsequent patterns of correct choices may identify how the error had been overcome. Children who no longer misrepresented a ball rolling down a bent tube as though it could only fall vertically, were asked sometimes to approach and sometimes to avoid where the ball landed. All children showed requisite task-switching flexibility. The pattern of 4-year-olds' correct choices among different places showed unnecessary avoidance of any place that would previously have tempted them into a vertical-approach error, 5-year-olds rebounded into a reversal, and 7-year-olds were flexible. The data attest to an inhibition mechanism, ruling out competing possibilities.
Freeman
Norman H
NH
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, UK. n.freeman@bristol.ac.uk
Hood
Bruce M
BM
Meehan
Caroline
C
D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003071:Cognition; D003210:Concept Formation; D003463:Cues; D005106:Exploratory Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D002666:Psychology, Child; D011930:Reaction Time; D014796:Visual Perception