title: Under what conditions do young children have difficulty inhibiting manual actions?
abstract: Understanding how responses become prepotent is essential for understanding when inhibitory control is needed in everyday behavior. The authors investigated the conditions under which manual actions became prepotent in a go/no-go task. Children had to open boxes that contained stickers on go trials and leave shut boxes that were empty on no-go trials. In Experiment 1 (n = 40, mean age = 3.6 years), the authors obtained evidence consistent with this task requiring inhibitory control. Results of Experiment 2 (n = 40, mean age = 3.7 years) suggested that box opening was prepotent because (a) opening is the habitual action associated with boxes and (b) children planned to open boxes on go trials of the task. Experiment 3 (n = 96, mean age = 3.5 years) showed that even empty boxes elicited the same errors and that delaying responding reduced errors even though the delay occurred before the cue that indicated the correct response (contrary to a rule reflection account). Because the delay occurred after box presentation, performance was consistent with a transient activation account. Delay training might benefit children with weak inhibition.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, England. a.simpson@londonmet.ac.uk
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Simpson
authors.forename: Kevin J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Riggs
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance