Preschool children's control of action outcomes.
Naturalistic goal-directed behaviours require the engagement and maintenance of appropriate levels of cognitive control over relatively extended intervals of time. In two experiments, we examined preschool children's abilities to maintain top-down control throughout the course of a sequential task. Both 3- and 5-year-olds demonstrated good abilities to access goals at the lowest level of the representational hierarchy. However, only 5-year-olds consistently aligned their response choices with goals at superordinate levels. These findings suggest that the ability to maintain top-down control and adjust behavioural responses according to goals at multiple levels of abstraction undergoes a marked improvement throughout the preschool period. Results are discussed in relation to current accounts of cognitive control and the monitoring of conflict in sequential action.
Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck University of London, UK.
Livia
L
Freier
Centre for Cognition, Computation and Modelling, Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck University of London, UK.
Richard P
RP
Cooper
Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck University of London, UK.|Centre for Cognition, Computation and Modelling, Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck University of London, UK.
Denis
D
Mareschal
D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D007100:Imitative Behavior; D007858:Learning