Prior task experience increases 5‐year‐old children's use of proactive control: Behavioral and pupillometric evidence

Abstract

Children engage cognitive control reactively when they encounter conflicts; however, they can also resolve conflicts proactively. Recent studies have begun to clarify the mechanisms that support the use of proactive control in children; nonetheless, sufficient knowledge has not been accumulated regarding these mechanisms. Using behavioral and pupillometric measures, we tested the novel possibility that 5‐year‐old children (N = 58) learn to use proactive control via the acquisition of abstract task knowledge that captures regularities of the task. Participants were assigned to either a proactive training group or a control training group. In the proactive training group, participants engaged in a training phase where using proactive control was encouraged, followed by a test phase using different stimuli where both proactive and reactive control could be used. In the control training group, participants engaged in a training phase where both cognitive control strategies could be used, followed by a similarly‐structured test phase using different stimuli. We demonstrated children in the control training group responded more quickly and accurately and showed greater cue‐related pupil dilation in the test phase than in the training phase. However, there were no differences in response times, accuracies, and pupil dilation between the proactive and control training groups in the training and test phases. These findings suggest that prior task experience, that goes beyond specific knowledge about the timing of task goal activation, can lead children to engage more proactive control endogenously, even if they are not directly encouraged to do so.

Special issue on development of self‐regulation, cognitive control, and executive function, Part I: Editorial note

“…In particular, Yanaoka et al. (2022) reported that prior task experience influences engagement of proactive control at age 5, suggesting that young children may learn to use proactive control through the acquisition of abstract task knowledge that captures regularities of the task. Berger & Grosse Wiesmann (2022) reported a facilitation effect of positive emotion on conflict processing in 2‐ to 7‐year‐olds, hence suggesting that positive emotion can already trigger efficient control processes from early stages of self‐regulation development.…”

Evidence for positive and negative transfer of abstract task knowledge in adults and school-aged children

“…However, the transfer of temporal aspects of task knowledge has been demonstrated only in adults. Yanaoka et al (2022) did not provide clear evidence that 5-year-olds can use their knowledge of the temporal structure of activation of task goals to support their subsequent engagement of proactive control.…”

“…Second, we predicted that adults (Experiment 1) and schoolaged children (Experiment 2) in the proactive possible training group would respond more quickly in the test phase than in the training phase, suggesting that they engage proactive control more efficiently at test following training; that is, positive transfer would occur. This second prediction is based on the evidence that practice with cued task-switching might simply help 5-year-olds shift towards proactive control in a subsequent cued task-switching condition (Yanaoka et al, 2022) Importantly, as suggested by Bhandari and Badre (2018), it is possible that both positive and negative transfer effects would transiently occur during the initial trials of the test phase and rapidly decrease across subsequent trials.…”

“…A few studies have examined whether learning task knowledge of the temporal structure of the activation of task goals affects how individuals transfer cognitive control to different task environments (Bhandari & Badre, 2018Gonthier et al, 2021;Sabah et al, 2021;Yanaoka et al, 2022). For example, Bhandari and Badre (2018) focused on proactive and reactive control strategies in a working memory task (i.e., input and output gating policies), demonstrating that adults show positive or negative transfer of a control strategy across working memory tasks that differ in their stimulus-response mappings.…”

“…For example, Bhandari and Badre (2018) focused on proactive and reactive control strategies in a working memory task (i.e., input and output gating policies), demonstrating that adults show positive or negative transfer of a control strategy across working memory tasks that differ in their stimulus-response mappings. For children, a recent developmental study (Yanaoka et al, 2022) examined whether 5-yearolds, who are beginning to use proactive control, can learn to use proactive control, via the acquisition of knowledge of the temporal structure of goal activation, when engaging in cued task-switching. This study did not provide clear evidence that encouraging the use of proactive control leads to cognitive control being engaged more proactively in subsequent conditions with the same task structure but different stimulus-response mappings.…”