When knowledge is not enough: The phenomenon of goal neglect in preschool children

Towse, John N.; Lewis, C. S.; Knowles, Mark

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2006.12.007

Cited by 66 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…As goal maintenance depends on workingmemory capacity, and working memory develops over the preschool period (e.g., Carlson, 2005), 3-year-old children may encounter goal-maintenance difficulty on the standard DCCS even though all trials are conflicting. Consistent with this, DCCS performance has been shown to be positively correlated with a task that favours goal neglect (Towse, Lewis, & Knowles, 2007).…”

Section: Goal Maintenance and Monitoringsupporting

confidence: 55%

The processes underlying flexibility in childhood

Cragg

Chevalier

2012

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

118

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It is now well established in the adult literature that the ability to engage in flexible thought and action is a complex skill that relies on a number of underlying processes. The development of this skill has received growing interest in recent years. However, theories explaining children's ability to switch between different tasks typically focus on a single underlying process and are rarely extended to explain development beyond the preschool years. This article reviews the current literature on set shifting in children in comparison with task switching in adults, in order to highlight the range of factors that impact on children's ability to flexibly shift between tasks. In doing this we hope to set the scene for future research that can begin to establish the relationships between these processes and how they change with age.

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Section: Goal Maintenance and Monitoringsupporting

confidence: 55%

The processes underlying flexibility in childhood

Cragg

Chevalier

2012

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

118

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“…To exert efficient executive control over actions, people must build clear and complete representations of task goals to be reached (Towse, Lewis, & Knowles, 2007; for the role of goals in action control, see, e.g., Altmann & Trafton, 2002). Indeed measures of flexibility are differently demanding in terms of task goal setting.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Setting goals to switch between tasks: Effect of cue transparency on children’s cognitive flexibility.

Chevalier¹,

Blaye²

2009

Developmental Psychology

118

142

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Three experiments examined the difficulty of translating cues into verbal representations of task goals by varying the degree of cue transparency (auditory transparent cues, visual transparent cues, visual arbitrary cues) in the Advanced Dimensional Change Card Sort, which requires switching between color-and shape-sorting rules on the basis of cues. Experiment 1 showed that 5-and 6-year-old children's performance improved as a function of cue transparency. Experiment 2 yielded the same pattern of results and showed that cue transparency effects cannot be accounted for by cue format only. Finally, Experiment 3 examined the effect of cue transparency in 7-and 9-year-olds and adults. The effect decreased over age for accuracy performance but not for latencies, suggesting that under some conditions, the difficulty of cue translation can still be observed in individuals whose inner speech is efficient. Overall, these findings showed that goal setting substantially contributes to children's flexible behaviors and continues to influence adults' performance.

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“…Compared to the other goal neglect studies conducted on children (Marcovitch et al, 2007;Marcovitch et al, 2010;Towse et al, 2007) the current study differs in two main areas.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Support for this idea comes from Duncan et al (1996) experiment 1, who used a broad age range of participants and found that the correlation between goal neglect and fluid intelligence was virtually unchanged when age was partialled out. Other goal neglect studies that have tested children (Marcovitch et al, 2007;Marcovitch et al, 2010;Towse et al, 2007), young adults (Roberts, Anderson, & Fox, 2013;Roberts, Jones, Ly, Davis, & Anderson, 2013) and elderly adults (Duncan et al, 1996) all indicate that goal neglect manifests similarly in different experimental paradigms.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One of the first studies to specifically investigate goal neglect in children (Towse, Lewis, & Knowles, 2007) administered the DCCS, an inhibitory control task, and a child-appropriate version of the Letter Monitoring Task (Duncan et al, 1996) to a group of preschool children. To adjust the Letter Monitoring Task for use with young children, the rate of stimulus presentation was slowed down, the number of stimuli was reduced, and the task was made more motivating for young children through an engaging story and appropriate task stimuli (i.e., naming types of food to help a hungry bear, as opposed to arbitrarily naming letters).…”

Section: Task Complexity and Goal Neglect In Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Task structure complexity and goal neglect in typically developing children

Roberts¹,

Anderson²

2014

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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Goal neglect is a failure to enact task requirements despite being able to accurately report them.In this study, we introduce a new child-appropriate experimental paradigm to measure goal neglect in children between the ages of 7 and 11, and test the hypothesis that the complexity of an action plan, not real-time trial demands, increases goal neglect. Sixty-six children (M age = 9.50) were administered a Feature Matching task. Half were given four rules for matching, and half three rules. After practice, the four-rule group was told to ignore the additional rule, and both groups completed an identical three-rule task. The results showed that the extra rule increased goal neglect and its correlation with fluid intelligence. While intermittent trial errors were correlated with fluid intelligence for both groups, only in the four-rule group were systematic rule failures (i.e., goal neglect) correlated with fluid intelligence. Task performance improved with chronological age, however when controlling for the influence of fluid intelligence, the relationship between age and task performance was effectively removed. This suggests a child's current level of fluid intelligence (and not age) determines task performance.We suggest that the relationship between goal neglect, complex task instructions, and fluid intelligence is linked to the mental preparation for future events; i.e., mentally compiling verbal instructions into a set of activated goal representations in working memory that represent what is to be done and under what circumstances.

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When knowledge is not enough: The phenomenon of goal neglect in preschool children

Cited by 66 publications

References 22 publications

The processes underlying flexibility in childhood

The processes underlying flexibility in childhood

Setting goals to switch between tasks: Effect of cue transparency on children’s cognitive flexibility.

Task structure complexity and goal neglect in typically developing children

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