Categorical flexibility in children: Distinguishing response flexibility from conceptual flexibility; the protracted development of taxonomic representations

Abstract

This research explored the development of children's use of multiple conceptual organizations (thematic, taxonomic) in sorting sets of pictures. Experiment 1 revealed that between 5 and 9 years, two forms of categorical flexibility can be distinguished: Response and conceptual flexibility. It appeared that children's multiple sorts do not necessarily reflect the use of different conceptual organizations. Such lag was mainly due to a difficulty of access to taxonomic representations, specifically in the younger age groups. Therefore, Experiment 2 investigated the development of taxonomic representations using an original approach requiring participants to decide whether new items could be included into an existing taxonomic sort. This approach showed that taxonomic representations were only gradually differentiated from thematic-and perceptual ones over the 5 to 10 years period. The discussion raises new hypotheses about the interaction between developing executive control (specifically, increasing resistance to interference of irrelevant information) and increasing conceptual knowledge in accounting for the development of conceptual flexibility. Categorical flexibility in children: Distinguishing response flexibility from conceptual flexibility The protracted development of taxonomic representations Categorization is considered as a fundamental component of cognition and as a highly powerful tool to organize the otherwise chaotic world with limited processing capacities; it is often restricted to taxonomic categorization. Yet, other forms (perceptual or thematic) of categorization do exist and adaptive categorization can imply switching between these different forms depending on one's current goal. A ball has to be considered as a round thing if the point is to pack everything before moving to a new house, but as a thing that "goes with" a tee shirt and sport shoes (thematic grouping) if the goal is to play a football game (Barsalou, 1983). Although, recent empirical research (see below) suggests that early on, children can sort objects on a thematic or taxonomic basis, little is known about the development of categorical flexibility per se ,i.e. the ability to switch between different categorical groupings of the same set of elements. Moreover, the extent to which switching between categorical responses (i.e. sorts) reflects the actual activation of diverse types of categorical representations is an entirely open question. According to recent empirical studies, several ways of categorizing objects are available from the preschool period and even in infancy (

The processes underlying flexibility in childhood

“…More precisely, flexible behaviour would be easier to engage in when the task to switch to only necessitates processing perceptual features of stimuli rather than when it requires identifying and interpreting semantic features. Consistent with this, preschoolers scored better on the traditional version of the DCCS (that involves switching between perceptual tasks) than on a version that required switching between semantic tasks (things that go outside/inside and toys/clothes; Bialystok & Martin, 2004; for convergent evidence, see Blaye et al, 2007;Blaye & Jacques, 2009;Blaye et al, 2006). In summary, research in adults has shown that persisting involuntary activation from a previous task set, and priming of that task set from irrelevant stimulus dimensions, can interfere with performance on the currently relevant task.…”

“…First, it may be easier to selectively attend to perceptual rather than semantic properties (Bialystok, 1999;Bialystok & Martin, 2004). Indeed, it is easier for school-age children to maintain or switch to thematic rules that can be easily conceptualized than it is to maintain or switch to hard-to-conceptualize taxonomic rules (Blaye, Bernard-Peyron, Paour, & Bonthoux, 2006;Blaye, Chevalier, & Paour, 2007;Blaye & Jacques, 2009;Maintenant & Blaye, 2008). Secondly, with a small set size, specific stimulus -response associations rather than task-level associations may be employed (Kray & Eppinger, 2006;Rogers & Monsell, 1995).…”

Sorting between dimensions: Conditions of cognitive flexibility in preschoolers

“…7 In fact, even 4-year-olds seem to have severe problems with flexible switching when strong situational cues are absent. Blaye, Bernard-Peyron, Paour, and Bonthoux (2006) gave children a free sorting task with sets of colored pictures that could be grouped into three different categories. Approximately half (43%) of the 4-year-olds were not able to sort the items according to thematic or taxonomic organizations, and all of the others (except two) were not able to use more than one correct grouping.…”

Cognitive flexibility in young children: General or task-specific capacity?

“…In addition, the strength of preschoolers' working memory representation of rules determines their rule-switching speed even when they do not make errors (Holt & Deák, 2015). Children's conceptual knowledge also affects how readily they switch between subtasks (Blaye, Bernard-Peyron, Paour, & Bonthoux, 2006;Deák, Ray, & Pick, 2004). Thus, specific knowledge affects flexibility, and it is important to control or assess the specific difficulty of each (cue-or rule-based) subtask, and of each test overall, in order to interpret similarities and differences between tests.…”