title: The influence of stimulus-set size on developmental changes in cognitive control and conflict adaptation.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany. j.kray@mx.uni-saarland.de
authors.forename: Jutta
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kray
authors.forename: Julia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Karbach
authors.forename: Agnès
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Blaye
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D011597:Psychomotor Performance