Feedback Enhances Preschoolers’ Performance in an Inhibitory Control Task

Abstract

Accomplishing inhibition tasks requires not only inhibitory skills but also goal maintenance. The present study aimed to disentangle goal maintenance from inhibition. Therefore, we experimentally manipulated goal-maintenance demands by means of feedback. Three-year-old ( n = 84) and 4-year-old ( n = 75) preschoolers were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions. Results revealed an age-dependent pattern: three-year-olds that were assigned to one of the conditions with feedback outperformed those assigned to the control condition without feedback. It seems that especially performance-related feedback reduced goal-maintenance demands in 3-year-olds, resulting in enhanced inhibitory performance. Four-year-olds, in contrast, showed high performance across all conditions. Age-differences between the 3- and 4-year-olds were only significant for the control condition. Thus, with feedback, performance of the 3-year-olds was similar to that of the 4-year-olds. The present results seem to indicate that in an inhibition task, 3-year-olds’ struggle not only with inhibiting a prepotent response but also with adhering to the task goal.

Midfrontal theta oscillations and conflict monitoring in children and adults

“…However, an open question is whether and how performance monitoring and conflict monitoring, which are both supported by midfrontal theta oscillations, relate to each other. Facilitation of performance monitoring and control adjustment through response feedback, which conveys information about goal attainment, yields better behavioral performance in children, especially in incongruent trials (Oeri et al, 2019). However, it is unknown whether response feedback benefits performance via better conflict monitoring, better conflict resolution, or both.…”

“…Children may rely on response feedback to a greater extent than adults, who are more likely to monitor performance internally. Indeed, the beneficial effect of response feedback is greater in younger than older children (Oeri et al, 2019) and adolescents and adults show more mature online performance monitoring than children (Crone et al, 2006;Hadley et al, 2020).…”

Validation of a Virtual Reality Flanker Task

“…There are several validated versions of computerized tablet Flanker tasks (Davelaar & Stevens, 2009;Grainne, 2009;Kramer et al, 2013;McLoughlin et al, 2009;Oeri et al, 2019;Shimada et al, 2015). For instance, the UCR Brain Game Center has previously validated a computerized tablet version of the Flanker task, which is administered in several batteries to measure inhibitory control in different populations.…”