Science with Duplo: Multilevel goal management in preschoolers’ toy house constructions

Schröer, Lisanne; Cooper, Richard P.; Mareschal, Denis

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2020.105067

Cited by 8 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Tasks were presented in the order as described below. The data was part of a larger study into the development of different types of action planning in toddlers (Schroer et al., under review).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Development of executive functions has also been previously linked in infancy and childhood to improvements in motor planning (Gottwald et al., 2016; Pennequin et al., 2010) and control of action sequences (Schröer et al., 2021; Yanaoka & Saito, 2019, 2020). It is therefore expected that executive functions will play a role in the development of other forms of action planning, such as controlling actions with alternating patterns.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

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Left, right, left, right: 24–36‐months‐olds’ planning and execution of simple alternating actions

Schröer

Cooper

Mareschal

2022

Infancy

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This study investigated toddlers' ability to control simple alternating pattern actions, and how this relates to motor competence and executive functions. 70 toddlers between 24 and 36 months of age were instructed to sort coins in an alternating pattern into two boxes; left, right, left, right etc. Executive functions and memory competence performance were assessed in additional small games. The results showed that the ability to plan and execute actions according to a simple extended alternating pattern improved over toddlerhood. Furthermore, working memory and motor competence scores were both independent predictors of the ability to plan and execute simple alternating actions. These findings underscore the fact that between 24 and 36 months of age is a period in which the ability to string together multiple actions in a sequence to achieve a distal goal is still developing.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Left, right, left, right: 24–36‐months‐olds’ planning and execution of simple alternating actions

Schröer

Cooper

Mareschal

2022

Infancy

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“…Planning is a complex set of mental and behavioral operations that brings together cognitive, emotional, and motivational resources to achieve the desired goals (Shallice, 1982 ; Friedman and Schonick, 2014 ). In past studies, planning of simple actions and action sequences in infancy and childhood has been linked to improvements in the core aspects of executive functions (Pennequin et al, 2010 ; Gottwald et al, 2016 ; Yanaoka and Saito, 2019 , 2020 ; Schröer et al, 2021 ), and planning abilities on standard tasks such as the Tower of London have argued to be related to inhibition and set-shifting (Baughman and Cooper, 2007 ; Cooper and Marsh, 2016 ), suggesting a tight link between lower- and higher-level components of EF.…”

Section: Naturalistic Planning In Free-roaming Toddlers Under 3 Years...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing executive functions in free-roaming 2- to 3-year-olds

2023

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IntroductionCore aspects of executive functions (EFs) are known to be related to academic skills such as literacy and numeracy. However, school outcomes may also be related to higher-level functions such as planning. Nevertheless, few studies have considered assessing natural manifestations of higher-level EFs in children who are on the cusp of entering formal schooling. One reason for this is the difficulty of obtaining ecologically valid measures of EFs in preschool-aged children.MethodWe describe a novel task - building a striped Duplo tower subject to two constraints - designed to assess planning in real-world multi-action situation. Children were instructed to build a tower to a certain height by alternating between two different colors of blocks.ResultsPerformance on one of the constraints in this task was found to vary with age. Importantly, distinct components of multiple constraints planning performance predicted laboratory-based measures of inhibitory control and working memory efficacy.DiscussionThus, this task provides a simple, cheap and effective way of assessing executive function in toddlers through the observation of natural behavior. It also opens up possibilities to investigate the neurodevelopment of EF in the real world.

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“…Based on visual inspection, the marker on the knuckle represented the movement kinematics of the transport better than the wrist marker and was thus used for the analysis. 1 All pre-processing steps and filter settings were based on previous research (Cook et al, 2013;Schröer et al, 2021). The data was pre-processed in MATLAB (version R2018b, MathWorks, Inc., Natick, Massachusetts, United States).…”

Section: Infants' Action Kinematicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infants’ sensitivity to emotional expressions in actions: The contributions of parental expressivity and motor experience

Schröer

Çetin

Vacaru

et al. 2022

Infant Behavior and Development

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Science with Duplo: Multilevel goal management in preschoolers’ toy house constructions

Cited by 8 publications

References 59 publications

Left, right, left, right: 24–36‐months‐olds’ planning and execution of simple alternating actions

Left, right, left, right: 24–36‐months‐olds’ planning and execution of simple alternating actions

Assessing executive functions in free-roaming 2- to 3-year-olds

Infants’ sensitivity to emotional expressions in actions: The contributions of parental expressivity and motor experience

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