title: The role of stimulus novelty on children's inflexible dimensional switching.
abstract: Children's ability to flexibly shift attention between different representational schemes was investigated using the dimensional change card sorting task. Across three experiments (N = 56 three-year-olds and N = 40 four-year-olds in ; N = 14 three-year-olds in ; and N = 14 three-year-olds in ) the role of perceptual information on children's cognitive flexibility was investigated by manipulating different aspects of the task materials between pre- and postswitch phases. Better performance was observed when either task-relevant (the color or shape of the images on the cards) or task-irrelevant information (the background color or shape of the actual cards) was changed, with this improvement occurring when the changes were salient enough to induce a stimulus novelty effect.
authors.affiliation: University of Toronto Scarborough.
authors.forename: Gelareh
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Jowkar-Baniani
authors.forename: Mark A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Schmuckler
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis