Hearts, flowers, and fruits: All children need to reveal their post-error slowing

The Relationship between Executive Functions, Working Memory, and Intelligence in Kindergarten Children

“…The lack of such an association in our study, including the course of PES throughout a task block, suggests that this association might emerge only at a later age. Nevertheless, our descriptive and exploratory findings replicate recent previous findings that PES is robustly observed in young children (Ger and Roebers 2023). We further show that children reduce their PES throughout the course of a block, which may be a strategic down-regulation of the magnitude of slowing.…”

“…Potentially, in the face of high demands, the reduced exertion of cognitive control, reflected in reduced PES, may lead to a reduced probability of correct responses. This would also align with the findings of Ger and Roebers (2023) that PES may be a strategy that works to obtain a high accuracy only in sufficiently demanding EF tasks, such as the mixed block of the HF task. In sum, 6-year-old children appear to show post-error slowing, in a seemingly strategic manner to a certain extent, yet predictable individual differences in post-error slowing may develop later in developmental progression.…”

“…In children, the dynamics of PES are less well-known. A growing body of research finds evidence for PES in children as young as 3-4 years of age (Jones et al 2003), and across different executive function tasks (Ger and Roebers 2023;Dubravac et al 2020). PES, however, appears to be coarser in younger children and becomes fine-tuned with increasing age and experience (Brewer and Smith 1989;Dubravac et al 2021;Roebers 2022), and is associated with higher accuracy in various EF tasks (Ger and Roebers 2023;de Mooij et al 2021).…”

“…Children were between the ages of 5.5 and 7.5. Children who committed more than 40% errors in any of the blocks of the HF task (N = 23) were excluded from the analyses following Ger and Roebers (2023), to ensure that children understood the task well and performed above chance. Four more children were excluded due to not completing the dwarf task.…”

The Development of Cognitive Control in Preschoolers and Kindergarteners: The Case of Post-Error Slowing and Delayed Disinhibition

“…), behavioral PES has only been found in children as young as 3 years and 3 months to 5 months while playing "Simon Says", but not in younger toddlers, as was demonstrated in the pioneering study of Jones et al (2003). A growing body of work has been exploring the presence of PES in young children (Brewer and Smith 1989;Dubravac et al 2020;Fairweather 1978;Ger and Roebers 2023a;Gupta et al 2009;McDermott et al 2007; and more); however, the developmental course of this effect is far from being well understood. Most studies suggest that PES is more dramatic in young children (i.e., bigger than in adults; Masina et al 2018;Santesso et al 2006;Smulders et al 2016;and more), increasing between age 6 to 7 years (Gupta et al 2009), or 9 years (de Mooij et al 2022;Denervaud et al 2020), and then decreasing to reach the mature/adult size in adolescence.…”