Poster #10 - Goal neglect and inhibitory control in preschoolers

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Attention, Learning, Memory

Integrative Statement

Maintaining goal representations is crucial to performing daily activities, such as driving, cooking, and shopping; thus, the cognitive bases of goal maintenance have been extensively scrutinized. Several developmental studies have highlighted goal neglect among preschoolers, which is the phenomenon of the failure to maintain a task goal. Marcovitch, Boseovski, Knapp, and Kane (2010) examined the role of goal neglect in a Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) task that required children to sort “redundant” and “conflict” cards according to one dimension of target cards and then to sort those according to the other dimension. “Redundant” cards were the same as the target cards and could be sorted without attending to the rules, whereas “conflict” cards shared only one dimension with the target cards and encouraged awareness of the rules. Children neglected goals less often in mostly the conflict condition, which consists of 80% conflict and 20% redundant cards, compared with the mostly redundant condition, which consists of 20% conflict and 80% redundant cards. Marcovitch et al. (2010) also showed that children’s working memory capacity (WMC) is a significant predictor of performance in both conditions, suggesting the importance of goal maintenance in this task. Their regression analysis indicated that performance of mostly conflict card sorts in goal-neglect DCCS tasks might partly reflect conflict resolution, which relates to inhibitory control. Indeed, inhibitory control is taken as another potential factor to explain goal neglect. For example, Towse et al. (2007) showed that goal neglect is associated with response inhibition in another paradigm.
The present study aimed to examine the contributions of WMC and inhibitory control to performance of goal-neglect DCCS. A total of 61 children aged four to six years completed goal-neglect DCCS (mostly conflict and mostly redundant conditions), WM tasks (backward digit and visual counting span tasks), and inhibition tasks (red/blue task and fish flanker task). We conducted a series of hierarchical multiple regression analyses with the proportion of conflict cards sorted correctly in the goal-neglect DCCS as the dependent variable. First, the regression model included condition as a factor. As predicted, we found a significant main effect of condition, indicating that children were more successful in the mostly conflict condition than in the mostly redundant condition. Second, the model revealed that a main effect of WM task performance had to be replicated to be significant. Third, the model included inhibition task performance (Table 1). A significant interaction between condition and inhibition task performance was identified (b = - 0.04, SE = 0.02, t = -2.34, p (> |t|) = .021). A simple slope test revealed that inhibition measures significantly predicted the performance of goal-neglect DCCS in the mostly redundant condition (b = 0.12, z = 4.79, p < .001) but not in the mostly conflict condition (b = 0.04, z = 1.49, p = .139).
Overall, our findings confirm goal neglect among preschoolers, as a replication of Marcovitch et al. (2010). Importantly, beyond WMC, inhibitory control was found to predict goal neglect observed in the DCCS task.

Authors

• Kaichi Yanaoka, Kyoto University
  Presenting Author

• Yusuke Moriguchi, Kyoto University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Satoru Saito, Kyoto University
  Non-Presenting Author