Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Jan 1, 2009
This study addressed preschoolers’ cognitive flexibility in an inductive task requiring response ... more This study addressed preschoolers’ cognitive flexibility in an inductive task requiring response feedback processing to infer relevant task goals. A total of 63 4- to 6-year-olds were tested on a perceptual matching task in which they needed to switch attention among three colors. A computational model was designed to track down how responses to positive and negative feedback changed as children progressed through the task. The results showed that children’s differential response to positive and negative feedback developed with age. In addition, age differences in feedback responding increased as the task unfolded. These findings are interpreted as reflecting an increase in flexibility with age in terms of growing efficiency in feedback processing.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Jan 1, 2011
This study addressed the role of goal representation in preschoolers’ inhibition and flexibility ... more This study addressed the role of goal representation in preschoolers’ inhibition and flexibility performance. A total of 56 4- and 5-year-olds were tested in an adapted version of the Shape School task where the difficulty of goal representation was manipulated by varying the degree of transparency of task cues. The findings showed that both age groups’ performance in the flexibility phase was increased when demands on goal representation were alleviated by using transparent cues instead of arbitrary cues. Furthermore, 4-year-olds performed more accurately on go trials in the inhibition phase with transparent cues than with arbitrary cues. These results confirm the critical role of goal representation in flexibility and reveal its influence in inhibition contexts. Altogether, this study suggests that goal representation is a key element for efficient executive function across a variety of settings involving different executive functions.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Jan 1, 2011
Bilingual children have been shown to outperform monolingual children on tasks measuring executiv... more Bilingual children have been shown to outperform monolingual children on tasks measuring executive functioning skills. This advantage is usually attributed to bilinguals’ extensive practice in exercising selective attention and cognitive flexibility during language use because both languages are active when one of them is being used. We examined whether this advantage is observed in 24-month-olds who have had much less experience in language production. A battery of executive functioning tasks and the cognitive scale of the Bayley test were administered to 63 monolingual and bilingual children. Native bilingual children performed significantly better than monolingual children on the Stroop task, with no difference between groups on the other tasks, confirming the specificity of bilingual effects to conflict tasks reported in older children. These results demonstrate that bilingual advantages in executive control emerge at an age not previously shown.
The effect of bilingualism on the cognitive skills of young children was investigated by comparin... more The effect of bilingualism on the cognitive skills of young children was investigated by comparing performance of 162 children who belonged to one of two age groups (approximately 3- and 4.5-year-olds) and one of three language groups on a series of tasks examining executive control and word mapping. The children were monolingual English speakers, monolingual French speakers, or bilinguals who spoke English and one of a large number of other languages. Monolinguals obtained higher scores than bilinguals on a receptive vocabulary test and were more likely to demonstrate the mutual exclusivity constraint, especially at the younger ages. However, bilinguals obtained higher scores than both groups of monolinguals on three tests of executive functioning: Luria's tapping task measuring response inhibition, the opposite worlds task requiring children to assign incongruent labels to a sequence of animal pictures, and reverse categorization in which children needed to reclassify a set of objects into incongruent categories after an initial classification. There were no differences between the groups in the attentional networks flanker task requiring executive control to ignore a misleading cue. This evidence for a bilingual advantage in aspects of executive functioning at an earlier age than previously reported is discussed in terms of the possibility that bilingual language production may not be the only source of these developmental effects.
International Journal of Behavioral Development, Jan 1, 2011
Page 1. Modality switching cost during property verification by 7 years of age Sole`ne Ambrosi,1 ... more Page 1. Modality switching cost during property verification by 7 years of age Sole`ne Ambrosi,1 Sole`ne Kalenine,1 Agne`s Blaye,2 and Françoise Bonthoux1 Abstract Recent studies in neuroimagery and cognitive psychology ...
The current study evaluated the relative roles of conceptual knowledge and executive control on t... more The current study evaluated the relative roles of conceptual knowledge and executive control on the development of categorical flexibility, the ability to switch between simultaneously available but conflicting categorical representations of an object. Experiment 1 assessed conceptual knowledge and executive control together; Experiment 2 differentiated conceptual knowledge from costly executive processes. In Experiment 1, 3- to 5-year-olds were given a three-choice (taxonomic, thematic, and nonassociate) match-to-sample task and asked to match two associates. In Experiment 2, same-aged children were assessed on another match-to-sample task that reduced executive costs by presenting thematic and taxonomic associates on separate trials. By comparing performance across tasks, age-related changes resulting from conceptual knowledge and executive control indicated that conceptual knowledge of superordinate relations showed gains between 3 and 4 years, whereas gains in executive control were seen between 4 and 5 years, suggesting a décalage in the development of conceptual and executive processes underlying categorical flexibility.
Page 1. L'année psychologique, 2006, 106, 569-608 Le développement de la flexibilité... more Page 1. L'année psychologique, 2006, 106, 569-608 Le développement de la flexibilité cognitive chez l'enfant préscolaire : enjeux théoriques Nicolas Chevalier* et Agnès Blaye Université de Provence Centre de Recherche ...
... Virtually all objects belong to several categories, perceptual categories founded on shared p... more ... Virtually all objects belong to several categories, perceptual categories founded on shared perceptual properties, * Corresponding author: E-mail: agnes.blaye@univ-provence.fr Page 2. A. Blaye, N. Chevalier, JL Paour Cognition, Brain, Behavior 11 (2007) 791-808 792 ...
Dempster (Dempster, 1995; Dempster & Corkill, 1999) proposed that developmental changes in perfor... more Dempster (Dempster, 1995; Dempster & Corkill, 1999) proposed that developmental changes in performance on Piagetian tasks could be related to changes in inhibitory efficiency more than to logical development. In this study, the negative priming paradigm was adapted to the class inclusion task in order to investigate the role of inhibition and knowledge levels in the development of class inclusion. Participants were pre-tested on two inclusion tasks, the standard Piagetian task and Markman's modification task, and assigned to different knowledge levels: empirical, and logical necessity. Children were then tested on a priming version of the class inclusion task. Results showed a negative priming effect, indicating that the irrelevant ‘subclass comparison strategy’ was actively inhibited during the processing of the class inclusion task. This effect was found to vary as a function of knowledge levels, indicating that the need for inhibition was reduced when children had attained logical necessity.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Jan 1, 2009
This study addressed preschoolers’ cognitive flexibility in an inductive task requiring response ... more This study addressed preschoolers’ cognitive flexibility in an inductive task requiring response feedback processing to infer relevant task goals. A total of 63 4- to 6-year-olds were tested on a perceptual matching task in which they needed to switch attention among three colors. A computational model was designed to track down how responses to positive and negative feedback changed as children progressed through the task. The results showed that children’s differential response to positive and negative feedback developed with age. In addition, age differences in feedback responding increased as the task unfolded. These findings are interpreted as reflecting an increase in flexibility with age in terms of growing efficiency in feedback processing.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Jan 1, 2011
This study addressed the role of goal representation in preschoolers’ inhibition and flexibility ... more This study addressed the role of goal representation in preschoolers’ inhibition and flexibility performance. A total of 56 4- and 5-year-olds were tested in an adapted version of the Shape School task where the difficulty of goal representation was manipulated by varying the degree of transparency of task cues. The findings showed that both age groups’ performance in the flexibility phase was increased when demands on goal representation were alleviated by using transparent cues instead of arbitrary cues. Furthermore, 4-year-olds performed more accurately on go trials in the inhibition phase with transparent cues than with arbitrary cues. These results confirm the critical role of goal representation in flexibility and reveal its influence in inhibition contexts. Altogether, this study suggests that goal representation is a key element for efficient executive function across a variety of settings involving different executive functions.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Jan 1, 2011
Bilingual children have been shown to outperform monolingual children on tasks measuring executiv... more Bilingual children have been shown to outperform monolingual children on tasks measuring executive functioning skills. This advantage is usually attributed to bilinguals’ extensive practice in exercising selective attention and cognitive flexibility during language use because both languages are active when one of them is being used. We examined whether this advantage is observed in 24-month-olds who have had much less experience in language production. A battery of executive functioning tasks and the cognitive scale of the Bayley test were administered to 63 monolingual and bilingual children. Native bilingual children performed significantly better than monolingual children on the Stroop task, with no difference between groups on the other tasks, confirming the specificity of bilingual effects to conflict tasks reported in older children. These results demonstrate that bilingual advantages in executive control emerge at an age not previously shown.
The effect of bilingualism on the cognitive skills of young children was investigated by comparin... more The effect of bilingualism on the cognitive skills of young children was investigated by comparing performance of 162 children who belonged to one of two age groups (approximately 3- and 4.5-year-olds) and one of three language groups on a series of tasks examining executive control and word mapping. The children were monolingual English speakers, monolingual French speakers, or bilinguals who spoke English and one of a large number of other languages. Monolinguals obtained higher scores than bilinguals on a receptive vocabulary test and were more likely to demonstrate the mutual exclusivity constraint, especially at the younger ages. However, bilinguals obtained higher scores than both groups of monolinguals on three tests of executive functioning: Luria's tapping task measuring response inhibition, the opposite worlds task requiring children to assign incongruent labels to a sequence of animal pictures, and reverse categorization in which children needed to reclassify a set of objects into incongruent categories after an initial classification. There were no differences between the groups in the attentional networks flanker task requiring executive control to ignore a misleading cue. This evidence for a bilingual advantage in aspects of executive functioning at an earlier age than previously reported is discussed in terms of the possibility that bilingual language production may not be the only source of these developmental effects.
International Journal of Behavioral Development, Jan 1, 2011
Page 1. Modality switching cost during property verification by 7 years of age Sole`ne Ambrosi,1 ... more Page 1. Modality switching cost during property verification by 7 years of age Sole`ne Ambrosi,1 Sole`ne Kalenine,1 Agne`s Blaye,2 and Françoise Bonthoux1 Abstract Recent studies in neuroimagery and cognitive psychology ...
The current study evaluated the relative roles of conceptual knowledge and executive control on t... more The current study evaluated the relative roles of conceptual knowledge and executive control on the development of categorical flexibility, the ability to switch between simultaneously available but conflicting categorical representations of an object. Experiment 1 assessed conceptual knowledge and executive control together; Experiment 2 differentiated conceptual knowledge from costly executive processes. In Experiment 1, 3- to 5-year-olds were given a three-choice (taxonomic, thematic, and nonassociate) match-to-sample task and asked to match two associates. In Experiment 2, same-aged children were assessed on another match-to-sample task that reduced executive costs by presenting thematic and taxonomic associates on separate trials. By comparing performance across tasks, age-related changes resulting from conceptual knowledge and executive control indicated that conceptual knowledge of superordinate relations showed gains between 3 and 4 years, whereas gains in executive control were seen between 4 and 5 years, suggesting a décalage in the development of conceptual and executive processes underlying categorical flexibility.
Page 1. L'année psychologique, 2006, 106, 569-608 Le développement de la flexibilité... more Page 1. L'année psychologique, 2006, 106, 569-608 Le développement de la flexibilité cognitive chez l'enfant préscolaire : enjeux théoriques Nicolas Chevalier* et Agnès Blaye Université de Provence Centre de Recherche ...
... Virtually all objects belong to several categories, perceptual categories founded on shared p... more ... Virtually all objects belong to several categories, perceptual categories founded on shared perceptual properties, * Corresponding author: E-mail: agnes.blaye@univ-provence.fr Page 2. A. Blaye, N. Chevalier, JL Paour Cognition, Brain, Behavior 11 (2007) 791-808 792 ...
Dempster (Dempster, 1995; Dempster & Corkill, 1999) proposed that developmental changes in perfor... more Dempster (Dempster, 1995; Dempster & Corkill, 1999) proposed that developmental changes in performance on Piagetian tasks could be related to changes in inhibitory efficiency more than to logical development. In this study, the negative priming paradigm was adapted to the class inclusion task in order to investigate the role of inhibition and knowledge levels in the development of class inclusion. Participants were pre-tested on two inclusion tasks, the standard Piagetian task and Markman's modification task, and assigned to different knowledge levels: empirical, and logical necessity. Children were then tested on a priming version of the class inclusion task. Results showed a negative priming effect, indicating that the irrelevant ‘subclass comparison strategy’ was actively inhibited during the processing of the class inclusion task. This effect was found to vary as a function of knowledge levels, indicating that the need for inhibition was reduced when children had attained logical necessity.
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