Preschoolers can be instructed to use proactive control

Corentin Gonthier (1) , Agnès Blaye

1 LP3C - EA1285 - Laboratoire de Psychologie : Cognition, Comportement, Communication

Developmental improvement of cognitive control is partly grounded in a transition from reactive control (waiting for a critical stimulus to occur) to proactive control (preparing control in advance based on active maintenance of contextual information). Whereas older children and adults spontaneously use proactive control, children younger than 5-6 years of age usually rely on the less effortful and less effective reactive control in cognitive tasks. Prior studies hint that preschoolers may not be incapable of using proactive control, but that they usually fail to spontaneously engage in proactive control. As a way to better understand the reasons for the qualitative change in control mechanisms across development, the present study explored whether preschoolers can be induced to use proactive control through explicit instructions. A sample of 77 preschoolers and school-aged children completed two sessions of the AX-CPT paradigm: a baseline session, and one session either with proactive instructions, or without specific instructions. Results showed that asking children to use proactive control – but not simple practice – led preschoolers to demonstrate a clearly proactive pattern. Preschoolers in the proactive condition demonstrated no difference in degree of proactivity compared to older children. This confirms that the development of proactive control is less about acquiring a radically new ability and more about priorizing a different way of tackling the task. Four hypotheses to explain the developmental shift from spontaneous selection of reactive to proactive control are proposed.

Domaines: Psychologie

Corentin Gonthier, Agnès Blaye. Preschoolers can be instructed to use proactive control. Cognitive Development, 2022, 62, pp.101175. ⟨10.1016/j.cogdev.2022.101175⟩. ⟨hal-03627517⟩