title: Perceptual-motor constraints on decision making: the case of the manual search behavior for hidden objects in toddlers.
abstract: In the C-not-B task, 2.5-year-old children tend to look for an object in a location to which the hiding agent moved his hand (C) after moving an object from A to B. In three experiments, the authors investigated the nature of the constraints underlying toddlers' performance in this task. In Experiment 1, 2.5-year-olds were tested in a new version of the C-not-B task to investigate whether reaching with a detour leads to inhibition of direct visuomotor activation. The findings show that toddlers succeed more in the C-not-B task when a transparent barrier obstructs the path of the reaching movement. The results of Experiment 2 indicate that the successful performance of the children with a barrier cannot merely be the consequence of the longer duration of arm movements. In Experiment 3, pointing responses generated more toddlers' success in the C-not-B task than did reaching responses. These experiments suggest that decision-making processes and judgments in toddlers are affected by constraints intrinsic to the perceptual-motor system.
authors: Laboratoire Psychologie et Neurosciences de la Cognition et de l'Affectivité, Université de Rouen, 76821 Mont-Saint-Aignan, France. james.riviere@univ-rouen.fr
authors: James
authors: J
authors: Rivière
authors: Elodie
authors: E
authors: David
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D003463:Cues; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D011340:Problem Solving; D011597:Psychomotor Performance