Wan Chufan, Cai Hui, Li Fuhong
School of Psychology, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang 330022, China.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2024 Jul 8;14(7):578. doi: 10.3390/bs14070578.
Although the cognitive flexibility (CF) of preschool children has been extensively studied, the development of CF in children around three years old is unclear. This study aimed to investigate the CF of three-year-olds in a stepwise rule-induction task (sRIT) comprising nine steps in which children are encouraged to switch attention to a new rule and then implicitly inhibit the old one. A pair of boxes was displayed at each step, and children aged 2.5 to 3.5 years were asked to select the target. When children learned a rule (e.g., the shape rule), they were encouraged to switch rules through negative feedback. The results showed that most children (81.10%) passed at least one of the two sets of the sRIT, and children over the age of three years performed better than those under three years. Additionally, a positive correlation existed between rule switching and rule generalization, whereby the old rule was implicitly inhibited. These findings indicate that age three might be a milestone in the development of CF, and inhibitory control might play a vital role in rule switching.
尽管学前儿童的认知灵活性（CF）已得到广泛研究，但三岁左右儿童的CF发展尚不清楚。本研究旨在通过一个包含九个步骤的逐步规则归纳任务（sRIT）来调查三岁儿童的CF，该任务鼓励儿童将注意力转移到新规则上，然后隐性抑制旧规则。每一步都展示一对盒子，要求2.5至3.5岁的儿童选择目标。当儿童学会一条规则（如形状规则）时，通过负面反馈鼓励他们切换规则。结果显示，大多数儿童（81.10%）通过了两组sRIT中的至少一组，三岁以上儿童的表现优于三岁以下儿童。此外，规则切换与规则泛化之间存在正相关，即旧规则被隐性抑制。这些发现表明，三岁可能是CF发展的一个里程碑，抑制控制可能在规则切换中起关键作用。
