Abstract:Numerous studies have shown that children tend to view objects with similar shapes as having the same category. However, these studies often adopt simple categorization tasks and ignore the perceptual dimension (e.g., surface pattern of objects) that likely attract children's attention. The purpose of this study was to test how children categorize when pattern competes against shape. In Experiment 1a children were presented with a target and several testing objects that shared the same shape, color, or texture… Show more
Although the cognitive flexibility (CF) of preschool children has been extensively studied, the development of CF in children around three years old is unclear. This study aimed to investigate the CF of three-year-olds in a stepwise rule-induction task (sRIT) comprising nine steps in which children are encouraged to switch attention to a new rule and then implicitly inhibit the old one. A pair of boxes was displayed at each step, and children aged 2.5 to 3.5 years were asked to select the target. When children learned a rule (e.g., the shape rule), they were encouraged to switch rules through negative feedback. The results showed that most children (81.10%) passed at least one of the two sets of the sRIT, and children over the age of three years performed better than those under three years. Additionally, a positive correlation existed between rule switching and rule generalization, whereby the old rule was implicitly inhibited. These findings indicate that age three might be a milestone in the development of CF, and inhibitory control might play a vital role in rule switching.
Although the cognitive flexibility (CF) of preschool children has been extensively studied, the development of CF in children around three years old is unclear. This study aimed to investigate the CF of three-year-olds in a stepwise rule-induction task (sRIT) comprising nine steps in which children are encouraged to switch attention to a new rule and then implicitly inhibit the old one. A pair of boxes was displayed at each step, and children aged 2.5 to 3.5 years were asked to select the target. When children learned a rule (e.g., the shape rule), they were encouraged to switch rules through negative feedback. The results showed that most children (81.10%) passed at least one of the two sets of the sRIT, and children over the age of three years performed better than those under three years. Additionally, a positive correlation existed between rule switching and rule generalization, whereby the old rule was implicitly inhibited. These findings indicate that age three might be a milestone in the development of CF, and inhibitory control might play a vital role in rule switching.
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