Poster #1 - Inhibitory Control Contributes to Successful Memory-Guided Planning During Early Childhood

• In Event: Poster Session 16

Abstract

Memory-guided planning (MGP) involves sampling from past experiences to generate appropriate plans to achieve a goal or series of goals (Blankenship & Kibbe, 2019, 2022). Critically, when sampling from past experiences one must select the appropriate memory or memories, often when there is other conflicting information, to accurately plan for the goal at hand. Selection of the appropriate memory theoretically relies on inhibitory control (IC), or the ability to suppress conflict. The relation between MGP and IC across early childhood is not well understood. To address this gap in the literature, we examined the relation between IC and MGP in a sample of 2-4-year-old children.

48 children [10 2-year-olds (M=32.51, SD=2.50, 4 female), 24 3-year-olds (M=40.67, SD=3.40, 16 female), and 14 4-year-olds (M=55.09, SD=13.20, 2 female)] completed two online IC tasks and one MGP task. The IC tasks included a Day/Night (DN) and Reverse Categorization (RC) task. The DN task consisted of showing children a picture of a sun or moon and having them respond differently based on the condition (congruent, incongruent). In the congruent condition, children responded sun (3-year-olds) or day (4-year-olds) when shown a sun, and moon (3-year-olds) or night (4-year-olds) when shown a moon. In the incongruent condition, children responded moon (3-year-olds) or night (4-year-olds) when shown a sun, and sun (3-year-olds) or day (4-year-olds) when shown a moon. During the RC task children sorted big and little ducks into certain buckets depending on the condition (congruent, incongruent). In the congruent condition, children put the little duck in the little bucket and the big duck in the big bucket. In the incongruent condition, children put the little duck in the big bucket and the big duck into the little bucket. Finally, in the MGP task, children learned that two objects resulted in a specific outcome (blue or green candy dispensing from a machine). During test, children were asked to choose which object to use to retrieve the correct color of candy for an animal character (4 test trials). Critically, the MGP task required children to use memories (object/candy) to complete simple goals (candy for animal).

Performance on the MGP task was significantly above chance for 3-year-olds (M=.78, SD=.28, t=4.40, p<0.001) and 4-year-olds (M=.88, SD=.19, t=7.39, p<0.001), but not for 2-year-olds (M=.69, SD=.35, t=1.67, p=.13). A series of ANOVAs showed significant differences between age groups on the DN [F(2, 45)=11.41, p<0.001] and the RC [F(2, 45)=7.28, p=.002] tasks, but no significant differences between groups on the MGP task [F(2, 40)=1.28, p=.29)]. However, age was positively correlated with performance on all tasks, including the MGP task [r(42)=.31, p=.045]. Finally, a stepwise regression analysis found that together the IC tasks predicted 12% of the variance in MGP performance above and beyond age.

Together, these results suggest that, regardless of age, IC plays an important role in MGP during early childhood, perhaps allowing for resolution of conflict during memory retrieval. These data also help to validate online MGP and IC assessments in preschool aged children.

Authors

• Que Anh Pham, University of Massachusetts Boston
  Presenting Author

• Tashauna Blankenship, University of Massachusetts Boston