Representation and Perseveration: Influences on Young Children's Representational Insight

Where Is the Real Cheese? Young Children's Ability to Discriminate Between Real and Pretend Acts

“…As we altered the side of correct choice on every trial after the first one, these three children scored "1, 0, 1, 0" across the four trials, which might compromise the group performance to some degree. The side bias from the first trial to the second one may be explained by perseverative searching in young children (O'Sullivan et al, 2001;Schmitt & Anderson, 2002;Suddendorf, 2003), but perseveration could not explain the side bias across the four trials. As we altered the side of the correct choice on every trial after the first one, a child who perseverated throughout the test would always choose the winning side of the preceding trial and thus scored "1, 0, 0, 0" rather than "1, 0, 1, 0."…”

“…Gender was thus not included in the main analyses. Past literature has suggested that when testing young children on multiple trials, first-trial performance would be less biased by confounding factors (e.g., learning effect, fatigue, or perseveration) and thus the most convincing (Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, Cauley, & Gordon, 1987;O'Sullivan, Mitchell, & Daehler, 2001;Schmitt & Anderson, 2002;Suddendorf, 2003). Therefore, each set of the analyses below examined children's performance (a) on the first trial and (b) over the four trials.…”

Symbolic Insight and Inhibitory Control: Two Problems Facing Young Children on Symbolic Retrieval Tasks

“…It is possible, then, that children did not inhibit the memory of the previous location, leading them to orient to the previous site, only to learn that it was either unavailable for searching or unable to hide the toy. Thus, these studies, though suggestive, have not definitely ruled out inhibitory control as a factor in overall performance (O'Sullivan et al, 2001).…”

“…However, there are still reasons to believe that difficulty with inhibition is also an important factor underlying poor task performance. First, although the studies detailed previously (O'Sullivan et al, 2001;Sharon & DeLoache, 2003) reported that performance remains low even when the opportunity for active, perseverative responses is not available, there is still reason to believe that deficits in inhibitory control are a factor in task performance. Deficits in inhibitory control can manifest themselves in two manners: inflexibility at the response level (difficulty inhibiting the motor act of searching the previous location) and inflexibility at the representational level (difficulty inhibiting the memory or representation of the previous location, leading to searching at that location).…”

“…Deficits in inhibitory control can manifest themselves in two manners: inflexibility at the response level (difficulty inhibiting the motor act of searching the previous location) and inflexibility at the representational level (difficulty inhibiting the memory or representation of the previous location, leading to searching at that location). (e.g., Jacques, Zelazo, Kirkham, & Semscesen, 1999;O'Sullivan et al, 2001;Sharon & DeLoache, 2003;Zelazo & Frye, 1998;Zelazo, Reznick, & Pinon, 1995.) It is possible that the task manipulations did not actually affect this latter form of inhibition.…”