Preschool children’s control of action outcomes

Freier, Livia and Cooper, Richard P. and Mareschal, Denis (2017) Preschool children’s control of action outcomes. Developmental Science 20 (2), e12354. ISSN 1363-755x.

Abstract

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.

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