Understanding of Others as Evaluators in Preschool-aged Children

• In Event: Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Topic - Attention, Learning, Memory

Abstract

With age, children become increasingly capable of using control to regulate their thoughts and actions in the service of goals. However, much remains unknown about how this occurs. Theories emphasize prefrontal cortical development and mechanisms like inhibitory control, active maintenance, and reflection. By contrast, there has been limited consideration of how conceptual factors, such as developing social understanding and self-awareness, may affect how children use executive control. The current study explores the hypothesis that children’s developing self-awareness may be related to increases in self-reflection and control. Recent work suggests even young toddlers may be implicitly aware of others as evaluators and modify their behavior accordingly to please them, and preschoolers exercise control on a delay task if led to believe others (peers, parents) will learn how long they delayed. On the other hand, self-awareness may develop gradually in the early years (Rochat, 2003), which may, in turn, lead to changes in how children can engage control (e.g., to monitor and regulate their own behavior). Moreover, Montessori-educated children, who perform well on executive function tasks, are encouraged to make choices and develop independence and mind-body awareness, may have more opportunities to develop self-awareness than children in conventional schools. In this study, we investigate self-awareness in 3.5- to 5-year-olds, explore possible relations with executive function, theory of mind, and traditional vs. Montessori education. To this end, we adapted a measure from prior work (Botto & Rochat, 2018) where children watch several clips in which an experimenter reveals an object (e.g., a toy with two buttons) and displays a preference for one use of the object over another (e.g., pressing one button vs. another). Children are then told it is their turn and asked how they want to use the object: in the experimenter preferred way, experimenter-dispreferred way, or a novel way. On half the trials, the experimenter will indicate that she will watch while they choose, and on the other half, she will indicate that she will leave the room. We will test executive function using three measures: the Dimensional Change Card Sort, Go/No-Go, and the Backwards Digit Span. Our preregistration can be found here: https://osf.io/kuw7c/?view_only=e63764d04a7c46d7b476ae3ff10454d8. Among our predictions are: 1) children’s performance on the self-awareness task will vary by trial type (‘watched’ vs. ‘not watched’) with the odds of exclusively selecting the experimenter-preferred option being greater for the ‘watched’ trials; 2) children who tend to show this trial effect on the self-awareness task will score higher on our executive function composite and will be older; Montessori-educated children will score higher on the executive function composite and the self-awareness task than conventionally-schooled children. We will use linear mixed models implemented using the R package lme4 to conduct our analyses. Data collection begins December 2020 and is expected to conclude before April 2021. The target sample size is 100 participants, 50 of which will be Montessori-educated children. Results are expected to shed light on the possible role of self-awareness in the development of executive function during the preschool years.

Authors

• Nicole J. Stucke, George Mason University
  Presenting Author

• Sabine Doebel, George Mason University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Fielder Wise, George Mason University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lynn Farquhar, Bowdoin College
  Non-Presenting Author