Contextual recruitment of cognitive control in preadolescent children and young adults.

The ability to use contextual cues to adjust cognitive control according to situational demands is a hallmark of flexible and adaptive behavior. We investigated the development of three different types of contextual control recruitment in children (9- and 12-year-olds) and young adults. First, we implemented a list-wide proportion congruence manipulation in which conflict trials were frequently/infrequently presented within a list of trials. Second, we implemented a location-specific proportion congruence manipulation in which conflict trials were frequently/infrequently presented at one of two locations. Both types of contextual control recruitment are based on the formation of high-level associations between context features (lists and locations) and the respective cognitive control set. Contextual recruitment of control is observed in reduced interference at contexts with high conflict frequencies. Finally, we investigated a trial-by-trial, conflict-triggered recruitment of cognitive control. Here, the experience of a conflict in the previous trial is expected to reduce subsequent conflict. In all three forms of control recruitment, distinct contextual cues reveal information about the required extent of cognitive control. Young adults showed reliable adjustments of control for all types of contextual cues. Children were able to demonstrate contextual control recruitment based on stable context-control associations (lists and locations). However, using single conflict signals turned out to challenge children in that they were able to adapt control resources only for error reduction, not for reaction times. Altogether, the results indicated that children can learn and use high-level associations between context and control sets. Implications regarding proactive and reactive mechanisms of cognitive control are discussed.

Do emotionally salient cues improve prospective memory performance in children and adolescents with autism?

BACKGROUND: Prospective memory (PM) describes the ability to initiate and perform a planned action after a delay. Previous studies suggest reduced PM in autism spectrum disorder (ASD); especially when tasks put high demands on executive control resources. Increasing cue salience by presenting emotional cues improves PM performance in non-autistic populations. AIMS: To explore whether children with ASD, whose processing of emotionally connoted information might differ from that of typically developing children, may also benefit from this type of salience in PM tasks. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Twenty-five children with and 25 children without ASD completed a 1-back ongoing task into which an event-based PM task was embedded. Emotional salience of PM cues was varied. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Children with ASD performed as well as children without ASD on the PM task and equally benefited from emotionally salient cues. Specifically, negative cues increased PM performance compared to neutral cues in both groups CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: The findings are consistent with the multiprocess framework which postulates that salient PM cues increase performance by promoting automatic intention retrieval and reducing executive control demands. Children with ASD seem to show similar comprehension and accessibility to emotional cues as typically developing children.

Prospective memory in autism: theory and literature review.

OBJECTIVE: The current article set out to review all research conducted to date investigating prospective memory (PM) in autism. METHOD: All studies on PM in autism are first described, followed by a critical review and discussion of experimental findings within the multiprocess framework. PM in autism is then considered through an embodied predictive-coding account of autism. RESULTS: Overall, despite somewhat inconsistent methodologies, a general deficit in PM in autism is observed, with evidence mostly in line with the multiprocess framework. That is, for tasks that are high in cognitive and attentional demand (e.g. time-based tasks; event-based cues of non-focality or low salience) PM performance of autistic participants is impaired. Building upon previous work in predictive-coding, and the way in which expected precision modulates attention, we postulate mechanisms that underpin PM and the potential deficits seen in autism. Furthermore, a unifying predictive-coding account of autism is extended under embodied predictive-coding models, to show how a predictive-coding impairment accounts not only for characteristic autistic difficulties, but also for commonly found differences in autistic movement. CONCLUSIONS: We show how differences in perception and action, core to the development of autism, lead directly to problems seen in PM. Using this link between movement and PM, we then put forward a number of holistic, embodied interventions to support PM in autism.

Effects of Episodic Future Thinking and Self-Projection on Children's Prospective Memory Performance.

The present study is the first to investigate the benefits of episodic future thinking (EFT) at encoding on prospective memory (PM) in preschool (age: M = 66.34 months, SD = 3.28) and primary school children (age: M = 88.36 months, SD = 3.12). A second aim was to examine if self-projection influences the possible effects of EFT instructions. PM was assessed using a standard PM paradigm in children with a picture-naming task as the ongoing activity in which the PM task was embedded. Further, two first- and two second-order ToM tasks were administered as indicator of children's self-projection abilities. Forty-one preschoolers and 39 school-aged children were recruited. Half of the participants in each age group were instructed to use EFT as a strategy to encode the PM task, while the others received standard PM instructions. Results revealed a significant age effect, with school-aged children significantly outperforming preschoolers and a significant effect of encoding condition with overall better performance when receiving EFT instructions compared to the standard encoding condition. Even though the interaction between age group and encoding condition was not significant, planned comparisons revealed first evidence that compared to the younger age group, older children's PM benefitted more from EFT instructions during intention encoding. Moreover, results showed that although self-projection had a significant impact on PM performance, it did not influence the effects of EFT instructions. Overall, results indicate that children can use EFT encoding strategies to improve their PM performance once EFT abilities are sufficiently developed. Further, they provide first evidence that in addition to executive functions, which have already been shown to influence the development of PM across childhood, self-projection seems to be another key mechanism underlying this development.