FA Judgement of Numerical Equivalence and Numerical Categorization by Young Children with Disabilities (original) (raw)

Rules Sara Baker, Ori Friedman, Alan M. Leslie (sbaker@ruccs.rutgers.edu) Cognitive development in the preschool years is characterized by diminishing impulsivity in thought and action. Controlling urges and selecting the appropriate response are typical 'Executive Functions' (EF). Standard EF tasks for preschoolers use perceptually-based rules (responses are reliably paired with a perceptual stimulus throughout the trials) rather than abstract rules. We present a new task targeting abstract EF. In the first block, the rule was either congruent, or incongruent. In the second block, children either switched rules, or continued with the same rule. In terms of EF, two inhibitory efforts were required: pointing to the incongruent stimulus, and switching from one rule to another. We found that preschoolers performed significantly better on the trials requiring less inhibitory processing. Exploring the development of inhibitory processing is essential to current research in our la...