Young children who abandon error behaviourally still have to free themselves mentally: a retrospective test for inhibition in intuitive physics

Dev Sci. 2004 Jun;7(3):277-82. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2004.00346.x.

Abstract

When preschoolers overcome persistent error, subsequent patterns of correct choices may identify how the error had been overcome. Children who no longer misrepresented a ball rolling down a bent tube as though it could only fall vertically, were asked sometimes to approach and sometimes to avoid where the ball landed. All children showed requisite task-switching flexibility. The pattern of 4-year-olds' correct choices among different places showed unnecessary avoidance of any place that would previously have tempted them into a vertical-approach error, 5-year-olds rebounded into a reversal, and 7-year-olds were flexible. The data attest to an inhibition mechanism, ruling out competing possibilities.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Child
  • Child Behavior
  • Child Development / physiology*
  • Child, Preschool
  • Choice Behavior*
  • Cognition*
  • Concept Formation
  • Cues
  • Exploratory Behavior
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Learning*
  • Male
  • Psychology, Child
  • Reaction Time
  • Visual Perception*