The Development of Relational Reasoning: An Eyetracking Analysis of Strategy Use and Adaptation in Children and Adults Performing Matrix Completion.

Relational reasoning is a key component of fluid intelligence and an important predictor of academic achievement. Relational reasoning is commonly assessed using matrix completion tasks, in which participants see an incomplete matrix of items that vary on different dimensions and select a response that best completes the matrix based on the relations among items. Performance on such assessments increases dramatically across childhood into adulthood. However, despite widespread use, little is known about the strategies associated with good or poor matrix completion performance in childhood. This study examined the strategies children and adults use to solve matrix completion problems, how those strategies change with age, and whether children and adults adapt strategies to difficulty. We used eyetracking to infer matrix completion strategy use in 6- and 9-year-old children and adults. Across ages, scanning across matrix rows and columns predicted good overall performance, and quicker and higher rates of consulting potential answers predicted poor performance, indicating that optimal matrix completion strategies are similar across development. Indices of good strategy use increased across childhood. As problems increased in difficulty, children and adults increased their scanning of matrix rows and columns, and adults and 9-year-olds also shifted strategies to rely more on consulting potential answers. Adapting strategies to matrix difficulty, particularly increased scanning of rows and columns, was associated with good overall performance in both children and adults. These findings underscore the importance of both spontaneous and adaptive strategy use in individual differences in relational reasoning and its development.

Why doesn't executive function training improve academic achievement? Rethinking individual differences, relevance, and engagement from a contextual framework.

Performance on lab assessments of executive functions predicts academic achievement and other positive life outcomes. A primary goal of research on executive functions has been to design interventions that improve outcomes like academic achievement by improving executive functions. These interventions typically involve extensive practice on abstract lab-based tasks and lead to improvements on these practiced tasks. However, interventions rarely improve performance on non-practiced tasks and rarely benefit outcomes like academic achievement. Contemporary frameworks of executive function development suggest that executive functions develop and are engaged within personal, social, historical, and cultural contexts. Abstract lab-based tasks do not well-capture the real-world contexts that require executive functions and should not be expected to provide generalized benefits outside of the lab. We propose a perspective for understanding individual differences in performance on executive function assessments that focuses on contextual influences on executive functions. We extend this contextual approach to training executive function engagement, rather than training executive functions directly. First, interventions should incorporate task content that is contextually relevant to the targeted outcome. Second, interventions should encourage engaging executive functions through reinforcement and contextual relevance, which may better translate to real-world outcomes than training executive functions directly. While such individualized executive functions interventions do not address systemic factors that greatly impact outcomes like academic achievement, given the extensive resources devoted to improving executive functions, we hypothesize that interventions designed to encourage children's engagement of executive functions hold more promise for impacting real-world outcomes than interventions designed to improve executive function capacities.

Changes in adaptation to time horizons across development.

When making decisions, the amount of time remaining matters. When time horizons are long, exploring unknown options can inform later decisions, but when time horizons are short, exploiting known options should be prioritized. While adults and adolescents adapt their exploration in this way, it is unclear when such adaptation emerges and how individuals behave when time horizons are ambiguous, as in many real-life situations. We examined these questions by having 5- to 6-year-olds (N = 43), 11- to 12-year-olds (N = 40), and adult college students (N = 49) in the United States complete a Simplified Horizons Task under short, long, and ambiguous time horizons. Adaptation to time horizons increased with age: older children and adults explored more when horizons were long than when short, and while some younger children adapted to time horizons, younger children overall did not show strong evidence of adapting. Under ambiguous horizons, older children and adults preferred to exploit over explore, while younger children did not show this preference. Thus, adaptation to time horizons is evident by ages 11-12 and may begin to emerge around 5-6 years, and children decrease their tendencies to explore under short and ambiguous time horizons with development. This developmental shift may lead to less learning but more adaptive decision making. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Cultures Crossing: The Power of Habit in Delaying Gratification.

Resisting immediate temptations in favor of larger later rewards predicts academic success, socioemotional competence, and health. These links with delaying gratification appear from early childhood and have been explained by cognitive and social factors that help override tendencies toward immediate gratification. However, some tendencies may actually promote delaying gratification. We assessed children's delaying gratification for different rewards across two cultures that differ in customs around waiting. Consistent with our preregistered prediction, results showed that children in Japan (n = 80) delayed gratification longer for food than for gifts, whereas children in the United States (n = 58) delayed longer for gifts than for food. This interaction may reflect cultural differences: Waiting to eat is emphasized more in Japan than in the United States, whereas waiting to open gifts is emphasized more in the United States than in Japan. These findings suggest that culturally specific habits support delaying gratification, providing a new way to understand why individuals delay gratification and why this behavior predicts life success.

The Pandemic as a Portal: Reimagining Psychological Science as Truly Open and Inclusive.

Psychological science is at an inflection point: The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities that stem from our historically closed and exclusive culture. Meanwhile, reform efforts to change the future of our science are too narrow in focus to fully succeed. In this article, we call on psychological scientists-focusing specifically on those who use quantitative methods in the United States as one context for such conversations-to begin reimagining our discipline as fundamentally open and inclusive. First, we discuss whom our discipline was designed to serve and how this history produced the inequitable reward and support systems we see today. Second, we highlight how current institutional responses to address worsening inequalities are inadequate, as well as how our disciplinary perspective may both help and hinder our ability to craft effective solutions. Third, we take a hard look in the mirror at the disconnect between what we ostensibly value as a field and what we actually practice. Fourth and finally, we lead readers through a roadmap for reimagining psychological science in whatever roles and spaces they occupy, from an informal discussion group in a department to a formal strategic planning retreat at a scientific society.

Understanding and Supporting Inhibitory Control: Unique Contributions From Proactive Monitoring and Motoric Stopping to Children's Improvements With Practice.

Children struggle to stop inappropriate behaviors. What interventions improve inhibitory control, for whom, and why? Prior work suggested that practice proactively monitoring for relevant signals improved children's inhibitory control more than practice with motoric stopping. However, these processes were not clearly dissociated. This study tested 162 seven- to nine-year-old children (89 female, 72 male, 1 unreported; 82% White) on the stop-signal task, following monitoring or stopping-focused practice. Both methods improved inhibitory control, supported generalization, and interacted ( η p 2 = .20-.73). Practice approaches differentially impacted variability ( η p 2 = .01-.09). Only monitoring benefits showed signs of depending upon proactive control ( η p 2 = .02). These findings highlight unique contributions of attentional and stopping processes to inhibitory control, suggesting possibilities for tailored interventions.

Why Does Cognitive Training Yield Inconsistent Benefits? A Meta-Analysis of Individual Differences in Baseline Cognitive Abilities and Training Outcomes.

Despite growing interest in improving cognitive abilities across the lifespan through training, the benefits of cognitive training are inconsistent. One powerful contributor may be that individuals arrive at interventions with different baseline levels of the cognitive skill being trained. Some evidence suggests poor performers benefit the most from cognitive training, showing compensation for their weak abilities, while other evidence suggests that high performers benefit most, experiencing a magnification of their abilities. Whether training leads to compensation or magnification effects may depend upon the specific cognitive domain being trained (such as executive function or episodic memory) and the training approach implemented (strategy or process). To clarify the association between individual differences in baseline cognitive ability and training gains as well as potential moderators, we conducted a systematic meta-analysis of the correlation between these two variables. We found evidence of a significant meta-correlation demonstrating a compensatory effect, a negative association between initial ability on a trained cognitive process and training gains. Too few papers met our search criteria across the levels of proposed moderators of cognitive domain and training approach to conduct a reliable investigation of their influence over the meta-analytic effect size. We discuss the implications of a compensatory meta-correlation, potential reasons for the paucity of qualifying papers, and important future directions for better understanding how cognitive trainings work and for whom.

Adaptiveness in proactive control engagement in children and adults.

Age-related progress in cognitive control reflects more frequent engagement of proactive control during childhood. As proactive preparation for an upcoming task is adaptive only when the task can be reliably predicted, progress in proactive control engagement may rely on more efficient use of contextual cue reliability. Developmental progress may also reflect increasing efficiency in how proactive control is engaged, making this control mode more advantageous with age. To address these possibilities, 6-year-olds, 9-year-olds, and adults completed three versions of a cued task-switching paradigm in which contextual cue reliability was manipulated. When contextual cues were reliable (but not unreliable or uninformative), all age groups showed greater pupil dilation and a more pronounced (pre)cue-locked posterior positivity associated with faster response times, suggesting adaptive engagement of proactive task selection. However, adults additionally showed a larger contingent negative variation (CNV) predicting a further reduction in response times with reliable cues, suggesting motor preparation in adults but not children. Thus, early developing use of contextual cue reliability promotes adaptiveness in proactive control engagement from early childhood; yet, less efficient motor preparation in children makes this control mode overall less advantageous in childhood than adulthood.

Same Data Set, Different Conclusions: Preschool Delay of Gratification Predicts Later Behavioral Outcomes in a Preregistered Study.

One simple marshmallow test in preschool children predicts an array of important life outcomes, according to multiple studies spanning several decades. However, a recent conceptual replication casts doubt on these famous findings. We conducted an independent, preregistered secondary analysis to test whether previously observed longitudinal associations between preschool delay of gratification and adolescent outcomes would be conceptually replicated. Associations were significant for three of the five outcomes we tested using the analytic approach employed in the original studies of the marshmallow test. Relationships between delay of gratification and problem behavior held in bivariate, multivariate, and multilevel models; in contrast, no significant relationships between delay and problem behavior were found in the other recent replication, even though both studies used the same data set. These relationships were better explained by social support than by self-control, suggesting that the marshmallow test is predictive because it reflects aspects of a child's early environment that are important over the long term. This novel interpretation of the classic findings points to new directions for intervention.

Deciding What to Do: Developments in Children's Spontaneous Monitoring of Cognitive Demands.

How do children decide which tasks to take on? Understanding whether and when children begin to monitor cognitive demands to guide task selection is important as children gain increasing independence from adults in deciding which tasks to attempt themselves. In this article, we review evidence suggesting a developmental transition in children's consideration of cognitive demands when making choices about tasks: Although younger children are capable of monitoring cognitive demands to guide task selection, spontaneous monitoring of cognitive demands begins to emerge around 5-7 years. We describe frameworks for understanding when and why children begin to monitor cognitive demands, and propose additional factors that likely influence children's decisions to pursue or avoid cognitively demanding tasks.

Adaptive control and the avoidance of cognitive control demands across development.

Young adults adaptively coordinate their behavior to avoid demands placed on cognitive control. We investigated how this adaptive coordination develops by having 6-7- and 11-12-year-olds and young adults complete a demand selection task, in which participants could select between two tasks that varied in cognitive control demands via differences in rule switch frequency. Adults and older children exhibited significant preference for selecting the less demanding task, as well as a metacognitive signal guiding adaptive demand avoidance behavior across a variety of behavioral and self-report assessments. In contrast, despite evidence of differential demands on cognitive control, younger children did not coordinate their task selections to avoid higher demand. Together, these findings suggest that sensitivity and adaptive responses to control demands emerge with development and are consistent with gradual development of lateral prefrontal cortex, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and their functional connectivity, which support effort avoidance in adults.

Group Influences on Engaging Self-Control: Children Delay Gratification and Value It More When Their In-Group Delays and Their Out-Group Doesn't.

Self-control emerges in a rich sociocultural context. Do group norms around self-control influence the degree to which children use it? We tested this possibility by assigning 3- to 5-year-old children to a group and manipulating their beliefs about in-group and out-group behavior on the classic marshmallow task. Across two experiments, children waited longer for two marshmallows when they believed that their in-group waited and their out-group did not, compared with children who believed that their in-group did not wait and their out-group did. Group behavior influenced children to wait more, not less, as indicated by comparisons with children in a control condition who were assigned to a group but received no information about either groups' delay behavior (Experiment 1). Children also subsequently valued delaying gratification more if their in-group waited and their out-group did not (Experiment 2). Childhood self-control behavior and related developmental outcomes may be shaped by group norms around self-control, which may be an optimal target for interventions.

Using language to get ready: Familiar labels help children engage proactive control.

A key developmental transition is the ability to engage executive functions proactively in advance of needing them. We tested the potential role of linguistic processes in proactive control. Children completed a task in which they could proactively track a novel (target) shape on a screen as it moved unpredictably amid novel distractors and needed to identify where it disappeared. Children almost always remembered which shape to track, but those who learned familiar labels for the target shapes before the task had nearly twice the odds of tracking the target compared with those who received experience with the targets but no labels. Children who learned labels were also more likely to spontaneously vocalize labels when the target appeared. These findings provide the first evidence of a causal role for linguistic processes in proactive control and suggest new ideas about how proactive control develops, why language supports a variety of executive functions, and how interventions might best be targeted.

Getting ready to use control: Advances in the measurement of young children's use of proactive control.

A key developmental transition in executive function is in the temporal dynamics of its engagement: children shift from reactively calling to mind task-relevant information as needed, to being able to proactively maintain information across time in anticipation of upcoming demands. This transition is important for understanding individual differences and developmental changes in executive function; however, methods targeting its assessment are limited. We tested the possibility that Track-It, a paradigm developed to measure selective sustained attention, also indexes proactive control. In this task children must track a target shape as it moves unpredictably among moving distractors, and identify where it disappears, which may require proactively maintaining information about the target or goal. In two experiments (5-6 year-olds, Ns = 33, 64), children's performance on Track-It predicted proactive control across two established paradigms. These findings suggest Track-It measures proactive control in children. Theoretical possibilities regarding how proactive control and selective sustained attention may be related are also discussed.

Beyond personal control: The role of developing self-control abilities in the behavioral constellation of deprivation.

We agree with Pepper & Nettle that personal control is important in understanding people's willingness to engage in future-oriented behavior. However, this does not imply that self-control abilities play no role, for self-control abilities do influence whether individuals engage in future-oriented behavior. Personal control may also shape the development of self-control abilities, so contrasting the two may be a false dichotomy.

Trust matters: Seeing how an adult treats another person influences preschoolers' willingness to delay gratification.

Holding out for a delayed reward in the face of temptation is notoriously difficult, and the ability to do so in childhood predicts diverse indices of life success. Prominent explanations focus on the importance of cognitive control. However, delaying gratification may also require trust in people delivering future rewards as promised. Only limited experimental work has tested this idea, and such studies with children were focused on general reward expectations, so evidence was ambiguous as to whether social trust played a role. The present study provides the first targeted test of a role for social trust in children's willingness to delay gratification. Children observed an adult behave in either a trustworthy or untrustworthy manner toward another adult, then were tested in the classic delay of gratification task by that adult. Children were less likely to wait the full delay period, and waited less time overall, for a reward promised by an untrustworthy adult, relative to children tested by a trustworthy adult. These findings demonstrate that manipulations of social trust influence delaying gratification, and highlight intriguing alternative reasons to test for individual differences in delaying gratification and associated life outcomes.

Topography of Slow Sigma Power during Sleep is Associated with Processing Speed in Preschool Children.

Cognitive development is influenced by maturational changes in processing speed, a construct reflecting the rapidity of executing cognitive operations. Although cognitive ability and processing speed are linked to spindles and sigma power in the sleep electroencephalogram (EEG), little is known about such associations in early childhood, a time of major neuronal refinement. We calculated EEG power for slow (10-13 Hz) and fast (13.25-17 Hz) sigma power from all-night high-density electroencephalography (EEG) in a cross-sectional sample of healthy preschool children (n = 10, 4.3 ± 1.0 years). Processing speed was assessed as simple reaction time. On average, reaction time was 1409 ± 251 ms; slow sigma power was 4.0 ± 1.5 µV²; and fast sigma power was 0.9 ± 0.2 µV². Both slow and fast sigma power predominated over central areas. Only slow sigma power was correlated with processing speed in a large parietal electrode cluster (p < 0.05, r ranging from -0.6 to -0.8), such that greater power predicted faster reaction time. Our findings indicate regional correlates between sigma power and processing speed that are specific to early childhood and provide novel insights into the neurobiological features of the EEG that may underlie developing cognitive abilities.