The A‐Not‐B Error: Results from a Logistic Meta‐Analysis

Marcovitch, Stuart; Zelazo, Philip David

doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00095

Cited by 155 publications

(129 citation statements)

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“…In some tests, blocking problems that require the same cognitive strategy causes perseveration in subsequent problem solving (Luchins, 1942). Also, a few findings suggest that problem solving by infants or preschool children is affected by the number, order, and timing of successive problems (Cameron, 1979;House, 1973;Marcovitch & Zelazo, 1999;Reutener & Fang, 1985;Toppino, Lee, Johnson, & Shishko, 1979). Finally, another possibility was that perseverative responses in the FIM were an artifact of blocking trails by predicates.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Is perseveration caused by inhibition failure? Evidence from preschool children’s inferences about word meanings

Deák

Narasimham

2003

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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Four studies examined the relation between childrenÕs cognitive inhibition and flexibility in a lexical inference task. ChildrenÕs linguistic flexibility was assessed by the Flexible Induction of Meaning (FIM) test (De a ak, 2000a), which requires that children shift inferences about the meanings of several words for novel objects. In Study 1, 54 3-year-olds either were trained between blocks of problems, for a delay of 3 min, or received no training or delay. Training delays did not influence perseveration. In Study 2 (N ¼ 72 3-and 4-year-oldsÕ) novel word problems were grouped either to increase the frequency of cue switches (i.e., reduce response ''set'') or minimize the interval between problems about the same objects. Again, no effect was found. In Study 3, 48 3-and 4-year-olds completed 6 preliminary trials; in a high interference group these trials generated a response set to be inhibited upon the first switch to a new cue context. This group did not perseverate more than a control group. There was no association between FIM perseveration and a Stroop-like test of verbal inhibition though both were marginally related to receptive vocabulary. In study 4 (48 3-and 4-year-olds), FIM was again unrelated to Stroop performance, but was related to the ability to tell whether a situation or problem is indeterminate. Thus, flexibility across semantic inferences is not influenced by timing, order, and number of pre-switch problems and is not predicted by individual differences in a test of verbal inhibition. However previously reported age and individual differences in flexible induction of word meanings are robust and related to vocabulary and logical ability.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Marcovitch and Zelazo (1999), for example, found that infantsÕ perseverative searching increases with the number of successive trials in which an object was found at the first location. Cameron (1979) found that older children establish a stronger learning set when given more trials.…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Is perseveration caused by inhibition failure? Evidence from preschool children’s inferences about word meanings

Deák

Narasimham

2003

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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“…Diamond (1985Diamond ( , 1991, for example, argued that two processes limit infants' abilities to succeed on the A-not-B task: working memory and the ability to inhibit a rewarded motor response to A. Smith, Thelen, and colleagues (Smith et al, 1999;Thelen, Schoner, Scheier, & Smith, 2001) claim that the error arises from the task dynamics of reaching, such that "[i]nfants make perseverative location errors because the motor memory of one reach persists and influences subsequent reaches" (Thelen et al, 2001, p. 9). Zelazo and colleagues (Marcovitch & Zelazo, 1999;Zelazo, Reznick, & Spinazzola, 1998) account for perseverative responses in young children in terms of the relative dominance of a responsebased system "activated by motor experience" over a conscious representational system (Marcovitch & Zelazo, 1999, p. 1308. In each of these accounts, a history of reaches to the A location is a crucial aspect of the perseverative response.…”

Section: The A-not-b Errormentioning

confidence: 99%

Common Coding of Observation and Execution of Action in 9-Month-Old Infants

Longo¹,

Bertenthal²

2006

Infancy

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Do 9-month-old infants motorically simulate actions they perceive others perform? Two experiments tested whether action observation, like overt reaching, is sufficient to elicit the Piagetian A-not-B error. Infants recovered a toy hidden at location A or observed an experimenter recover the toy. After the toy was hidden at location B, infants in both conditions perseverated in reaching to A, demonstrating that active search by the infant is not necessary for the A-not-B error. Consistent with prior research, infants displayed an ipsilateral bias when reaching, the so-called mysterious midline barrier. A similar ipsilateral bias was also observed depending on the manner in which the experimenter reached; infants perseverated following observation of ipsi-but not contralateral reaches by the experimenter. Thus, infants perseverated only following observation of actions they themselves were able to perform, suggesting that they coded others' actions in terms of motor simulation.The ability to represent and understand the behaviors of others is crucial for interacting effectively in our social world. Much of this understanding takes place with little awareness of the perceived actions or responses that are involved. When observing the behaviors of another, we tend to implicitly know their wants, desires, and intentions (Blakemore & Decety, 2001). Moreover, our responses are automatically shaped by these behaviors (Blakemore & Frith, 2005). Dating back at least to Darwin's (1872Darwin's ( /1965 observations of spectators at sporting events, researchers have commonly noted that people will automatically imitate actions they observe others perform. For example, we direct our gaze in the same direction we see another individual look (Driver et al., 1999), and we mimic the facial Correspondence should be addressed to Matthew R. Longo,

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“…Cases and controls performed at roughly equivalent levels on both the AB and ABID tasks. In fact, cases performed slightly better than controls on several tasks, including the first reversal trial for the AB task, which is likely the best single indicator of perseverative behavior in the AB paradigm (Marcovitch & Zelazo, 1999).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…The task ended after two reversals followed by two consecutive correct trials at 12-second delay, or after 24 trials. Dependent variables included percent correct overall, percent correct on reversal trials, and the proportion of children making a correct response on the first B trial (Marcovitch & Zelazo, 1999;Wellman, Cross, & Bartsch, 1986).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Memory and Response Inhibition in Young Children with Single-Suture Craniosynostosis

Toth

Collett

Kapp-Simon

et al. 2008

Child Neuropsychology

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Using two versions of the A-not-B task, memory and response inhibition were assessed in 17-to 24-month-old children with surgically corrected single-suture craniosynostosis (cases) and unaffected children (controls). Children's development and language were initially assessed on average at 6-7 months of age and again at this second visit. Cases and controls performed at equivalent levels on average, with cases performing slightly better than controls on several of the variables measured. However, fewer cases than controls were able to complete the more challenging of the two tasks, which may have predictive significance for later functioning. Children's age and cognitive ability were related to successful performance on the A-not-B task. Among cases, age of cranioplastic surgery was unrelated to performance. Our findings suggest that children with single-suture craniosynostosis show normal development of visual memory and response inhibition in the age range studied here.

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The A‐Not‐B Error: Results from a Logistic Meta‐Analysis

Cited by 155 publications

References 58 publications

Is perseveration caused by inhibition failure? Evidence from preschool children’s inferences about word meanings

Is perseveration caused by inhibition failure? Evidence from preschool children’s inferences about word meanings

Common Coding of Observation and Execution of Action in 9-Month-Old Infants

Memory and Response Inhibition in Young Children with Single-Suture Craniosynostosis

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