[en] Emerging cognitive control supports increasingly efficient goal-directed behaviors. With age, children are increasingly expected to decide autonomously and with little external aid which goals to attain. However, little is known about how children engage cognitive control in such a self-directed fashion. The present study examined self-directed control development by adapting the voluntary task switching paradigm-the gold standard measure of this control form in adults-for use with 5-6-year-old and 9-10-year-old children. Overall, p(switch) suggested that even younger children can engage self-directed control successfully. However, other measures showed they struggled with task selection. Specifically, compared with older children and adults, they relied more on systematic strategies which reduced the cost of task selection, even when the strategy involved switching more often. Like externally driven control, self-directed control relies critically on task selection processes. These two forms of control likely form a continuum rather than two discrete categories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Disciplines :
Theoretical & cognitive psychology
Author, co-author :
Frick, Aurélien ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département des sciences cliniques ; Department of Psychology
Brandimonte, Maria A; Laboratory of Experimental Psychology
Chevalier, Nicolas; Department of Psychology
Language :
English
Title :
Voluntary task switching in children: Switching more reduces the cost of task selection.
Publication date :
August 2019
Journal title :
Developmental Psychology
ISSN :
0012-1649
eISSN :
1939-0599
Publisher :
American Psychological Association Inc., United States
University Suor Orsola Benincasa Napoli University of Edinburgh
Funding text :
This research was part of Aurélien Frick’s doctoral dissertation and funded by a doctoral scholarship from Suor Orsola Benincasa University and a Research Support Grant from the University of Edinburgh to Auré-lien Frick. We thank all participating schools, children, and parents. We also thank Liam Satchell for proofreading the final version of the manuscript.
scite shows how a scientific paper has been cited by providing the context of the citation, a classification describing whether it supports, mentions, or contrasts the cited claim, and a label indicating in which section the citation was made.
Bibliography
Arrington, C. M., & Logan, G. D. (2004). The cost of a voluntary task switch. Psychological Science, 15, 610-615. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00728.x
Arrington, C. M., & Logan, G. D. (2005). Voluntary task switching: Chasing the elusive homunculus. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 31, 683-702. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.31.4.683
Arrington, C. M., Reiman, K. M., & Weaver, S. M. (2014). Voluntary task-switching. In J. A. Grange & G. Houghton (Eds.), Task switching and cognitive control (pp. 117-136). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199921959.003.0006
Arrington, C. M., & Weaver, S. M. (2015). Rethinking volitional control over task choice in multitask environments: Use of a stimulus set selection strategy in voluntary task switching. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68, 664-679. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2014.961935
Barker, J. E., & Munakata, Y. (2015). Developing self-directed executive functioning: Recent findings and future directions. Mind, Brain and Education, 9, 92-99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/mbe.12071
Barker, J. E., Semenov, A. D., Michaelson, L., Provan, L. S., Snyder, H. R., & Munakata, Y. (2014). Less-structured time in children's daily lives predicts self-directed executive functioning. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 593. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00593
Barth, H., La Mont, K., Lipton, J., & Spelke, E. S. (2005). Abstract number and arithmetic in preschool children. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102, 14116-14121. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0505512102
Blackwell, K. A., & Munakata, Y. (2014). Costs and benefits linked to developments in cognitive control. Developmental Science, 17, 203-211. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/desc.12113
Blakey, E., Visser, I., & Carroll, D. J. (2016). Different executive functions support different kinds of cognitive flexibility: Evidence from 2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds. Child Development, 87, 513-526. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12468
Brandimonte, M. A., Filippello, P., Coluccia, E., Altgassen, M., & Kliegel, M. (2011). To do or not to do? Prospective memory versus response inhibition in autism spectrum disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Memory, 19, 56-66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2010.535657
Braver, T. S. (2012). The variable nature of cognitive control: A dual mechanisms framework. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16, 106-113. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2011.12.010
Broeker, L., Liepelt, R., Poljac, E., Künzell, S., Ewolds, H., de Oliveira, R. F., & Raab, M. (2018). Multitasking as a choice: A perspective. Psychological Research, 82, 12-23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00426-017-0938-7
Butler, K. M., Arrington, C. M., & Weywadt, C. (2011). Working memory capacity modulates task performance but has little influence on task choice. Memory & Cognition, 39, 708-724. http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13421-010-0055-y
Butler, K. M., & Weywadt, C. (2013). Age differences in voluntary task switching. Psychology and Aging, 28, 1024-1031. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0034937
Chatham, C. H., Claus, E. D., Kim, A., Curran, T., Banich, M. T., & Munakata, Y. (2012). Cognitive control reflects context monitoring, not motoric stopping, in response inhibition. PLoS ONE, 7, e31546. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0031546
Chevalier, N. (2015). Executive function development: Making sense of the environment to behave adaptively. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24, 363-368. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0963721415593724
Chevalier, N., & Blaye, A. (2009). Setting goals to switch between tasks: Effect of cue transparency on children's cognitive flexibility. Developmental Psychology, 45, 782-797. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0015409
Chevalier, N., Chatham, C. H., & Munakata, Y. (2014). The practice of going helps children to stop: The importance of context monitoring in inhibitory control. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 959-965. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0035868
Chevalier, N., Dauvier, B., & Blaye, A. (2018). From prioritizing objects to prioritizing cues: A developmental shift for cognitive control. Developmental Science, 21, e12534. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/desc.12534
Chevalier, N., Huber, K. L., Wiebe, S. A., & Espy, K. A. (2013). Qualitative change in executive control during childhood and adulthood. Cognition, 128, 1-12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2013.02.012
Chevalier, N., Jackson, J., Revueltas Roux, A., Moriguchi, Y., & Auyeung, B. (2019). Differentiation in prefrontal cortex recruitment during childhood: Evidence from cognitive control demands and social contexts. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 36, 100629. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2019.100629
Chevalier, N., James, T. D., Wiebe, S. A., Nelson, J. M., & Espy, K. A. (2014). Contribution of reactive and proactive control to children's working memory performance: Insight from item recall durations in response sequence planning. Developmental Psychology, 50, 1999-2008. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0036644
Chevalier, N., Martis, S. B., Curran, T., & Munakata, Y. (2015). Metacognitive processes in executive control development: The case of reactive and proactive control. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 27, 1125-1136. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_00782
Church, J. A., Bunge, S. A., Petersen, S. E., & Schlaggar, B. L. (2017). Preparatory Engagement of Cognitive Control Networks Increases Late in Childhood. Cerebral Cortex, 27, 2139-2153. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhw046
Dauvier, B., Chevalier, N., & Blaye, A. (2012). Using finite mixture of GLMs to explore variability in children's flexibility in a task-switching paradigm. Cognitive Development, 27, 440-454. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2012.07.004
Deák, G. O., Ray, S. D., & Pick, A. D. (2004). Effects of age, reminders, and task difficulty on young children's rule-switching flexibility. Cognitive Development, 19, 385-400. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2004.05.002
Demanet, J., De Baene, W., Arrington, C. M., & Brass, M. (2013). Biasing free choices: The role of the rostral cingulate zone in intentional control. NeuroImage, 72, 207-213. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.01.052
Doebel, S., Barker, J. E., Chevalier, N., Michaelson, L. E., Fisher, A. V., & Munakata, Y. (2017). Getting ready to use control: Advances in the measurement of young children's use of proactive control. PLoS ONE, 12, e0175072. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175072
Fröber, K., Pfister, R., & Dreisbach, G. (2019). Increasing reward prospect promotes cognitive flexibility: Direct evidence from voluntary task switching with double registration. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1747021818819449
Grant, D. A., & Berg, E. A. (1948). A behavioral analysis of degree of reinforcement and ease of shifting to new responses in a Weigl-type card-sorting problem. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 38, 404-411. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0059831
Greenhouse, S. W., & Geisser, S. (1959). On methods in the analysis of profile data. Psychometrika, 24, 95-112. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02289823
Holt, A. E., & Deák, G. (2015). Children's task-switching efficiency: Missing our cue? Journal of Cognition and Development, 16, 261-285. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2013.833921
Isacoff, N. M., & Stromswold, K. (2014). Not all lexical access tasks are created equal: Lexical development between three and five. First Language, 34, 43-57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0142723714521666
Kiesel, A., Steinhauser, M., Wendt, M., Falkenstein, M., Jost, K., Philipp, A. M., & Koch, I. (2010). Control and interference in task switching-A review. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 849-874. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0019842
Kray, J., Gaspard, H., Karbach, J., & Blaye, A. (2013). Developmental changes in using verbal self-cueing in task-switching situations: The impact of task practice and task-sequencing demands. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 940. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00940
Leigh, J., & Marcovitch, S. (2014). The cognitive cost of event-based prospective memory in children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 127, 24-35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2014.02.010
Liefooghe, B., Demanet, J., & Vandierendonck, A. (2009). Is advance reconfiguration in voluntary task switching affected by the design employed? The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62, 850-857. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470210802570994
Liefooghe, B., Demanet, J., & Vandierendonck, A. (2010). Persisting activation in voluntary task switching: It all depends on the instructions. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 17, 381-386. http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/PBR.17.3.381
Lucenet, J., & Blaye, A. (2014). Age-related changes in the temporal dynamics of executive control: A study in 5-and 6-year-old children. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 831. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00831
Mahy, C. E. V., Moses, L. J., & Kliegel, M. (2014). The development of prospective memory in children: An executive framework. Developmental Review, 34, 305-326. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2014.08.001
Mahy, C. E. V., & Munakata, Y. (2015). Transitions in executive function: Insights from developmental parallels between prospective memory and cognitive flexibility. Child Development Perspectives, 9, 128-132. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12121
Marcovitch, S., Boseovski, J. J., & Knapp, R. J. (2007). Use it or lose it: Examining preschoolers' difficulty in maintaining and executing a goal. Developmental Science, 10, 559-564. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2007.00611.x
Marklund, P., & Persson, J. (2012). Context-dependent switching between proactive and reactive working memory control mechanisms in the right inferior frontal gyrus. NeuroImage, 63, 1552-1560. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.08.016
Marsh, A. A., Blair, K. S., Vythilingam, M., Busis, S., & Blair, R. J. R. (2007). Response options and expectations of reward in decision-making: The differential roles of dorsal and rostral anterior cingulate cortex. NeuroImage, 35, 979-988. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2006.11.044
Meiran, N. (1996). Reconfiguration of processing mode prior to task performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22, 1423-1442. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.22.6.1423
Miller, E. K., & Cohen, J. D. (2001). An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 24, 167-202. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.neuro.24.1.167
Mittelstädt, V., Dignath, D., Schmidt-Ott, M., & Kiesel, A. (2018). Exploring the repetition bias in voluntary task switching. Psychological Research, 82, 78-91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00426-017-0911-5
Moriguchi, Y., & Hiraki, K. (2011). Longitudinal development of prefrontal function during early childhood. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 1, 153-162. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2010.12.004
Munakata, Y., Snyder, H. R., & Chatham, C. H. (2012). Developing cognitive control. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21, 71-77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0963721412436807
Nigro, G., Brandimonte, M. A., Cicogna, P., & Cosenza, M. (2014). Episodic future thinking as a predictor of children's prospective memory. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 127, 82-94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2013.10.013
Poljac, E., Haartsen, R., van der Cruijsen, R., Kiesel, A., & Poljac, E. (2018). Task intentions and their implementation into actions: Cognitive control from adolescence to middle adulthood. Psychological Research, 82, 215-229. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00426-017-0927-x
Reissland, J., & Manzey, D. (2016). Serial or overlapping processing in multitasking as individual preference: Effects of stimulus preview on task switching and concurrent dual-task performance. Acta Psychologica, 168, 27-40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2016.04.010
Siegler, R. S. (2016). Magnitude knowledge: The common core of numerical development. Developmental Science, 19, 341-361. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/desc.12395
Smith, R. E. (2003). The cost of remembering to remember in event-based prospective memory: Investigating the capacity demands of delayed intention performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29, 347-361. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.29.3.347
Smith, R. E., Bayen, U. J., & Martin, C. (2010). The cognitive processes underlying event-based prospective memory in school-age children and young adults: A formal model-based study. Developmental Psychology, 46, 230-244. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0017100
Snyder, H. R., & Munakata, Y. (2010). Becoming self-directed: Abstract representations support endogenous flexibility in children. Cognition, 116, 155-167. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2010.04.007
Snyder, H. R., & Munakata, Y. (2013). So many options, so little control: Abstract representations can reduce selection demands to increase children's self-directed flexibility. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 116, 659-673. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2013.07.010
Soon, C. S., He, A. H., Bode, S., & Haynes, J.-D. (2013). Predicting free choices for abstract intentions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 110, 6217-6222. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1212218110
Spiess, M. A., Meier, B., & Roebers, C. M. (2016). Development and longitudinal relationships between children's executive functions, prospective memory, and metacognition. Cognitive Development, 38, 99-113. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2016.02.003
Terry, C. P., & Sliwinski, M. J. (2012). Aging and random task switching: The role of endogenous versus exogenous task selection. Experimental Aging Research, 38, 87-109. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0361073X.2012.637008
Troyer, A. K., Moscovitch, M., & Winocur, G. (1997). Clustering and switching as two components of verbal fluency: Evidence from younger and older healthy adults. Neuropsychology, 11, 138-146. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0894-4105.11.1.138
Vandierendonck, A., Liefooghe, B., & Verbruggen, F. (2010). Task switching: Interplay of reconfiguration and interference control. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 601-626. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0019791
Weaver, S. M., & Arrington, C. M. (2010). What's on your mind: The influence of the contents of working memory on choice. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63, 726-737. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470210903137180
White, S. J., Burgess, P. W., & Hill, E. L. (2009). Impairments on "open-ended" executive function tests in autism. Autism Research, 2, 138-147. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aur.78
Yeung, N. (2010). Bottom-up influences on voluntary task switching: The elusive homunculus escapes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36, 348-362. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0017894
This website uses cookies to improve user experience. Read more
Save & Close
Accept all
Decline all
Show detailsHide details
Cookie declaration
About cookies
Strictly necessary
Performance
Strictly necessary cookies allow core website functionality such as user login and account management. The website cannot be used properly without strictly necessary cookies.
This cookie is used by Cookie-Script.com service to remember visitor cookie consent preferences. It is necessary for Cookie-Script.com cookie banner to work properly.
Performance cookies are used to see how visitors use the website, eg. analytics cookies. Those cookies cannot be used to directly identify a certain visitor.
Used to store the attribution information, the referrer initially used to visit the website
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. Websites use cookies to help users navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. Cookies that are required for the website to operate properly are allowed to be set without your permission. All other cookies need to be approved before they can be set in the browser.
You can change your consent to cookie usage at any time on our Privacy Policy page.