Journal article
Task structure complexity and goal neglect in typically developing children
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Vol.120, pp.59-72
2014
Abstract
Goal neglect is a failure to enact task requirements despite being able to accurately report them. In this study, we introduce a new child-appropriate experimental paradigm to measure goal neglect in children between 7 and 11 years of age and test the hypothesis that the complexity of an action plan, not real-time trial demands, increases goal neglect. A total of 66 children (Mage = 9.50 years) were administered a Feature Match task. Half of the children were given four rules for matching, and half were given three rules for matching. After practice, the four-rules group was told to ignore the additional rule, and both groups completed an identical three-rules task. The results showed that the extra rule increased goal neglect and its correlation with fluid intelligence. Although intermittent trial errors were correlated with fluid intelligence for both groups, only in the four-rules group were systematic rule failures (i.e., goal neglect) correlated with fluid intelligence. Task performance improved with chronological age; however, when controlling for the influence of fluid intelligence, the relationship between age and task performance was effectively removed. This suggests that a child's current level of fluid intelligence (and not age) determines task performance. We suggest that the relationship among goal neglect, complex task instructions, and fluid intelligence is linked to the mental preparation for future events, that is, mentally compiling verbal instructions into a set of activated goal representations in working memory that represent what is to be done and under what circumstances.
Details
- Title
- Task structure complexity and goal neglect in typically developing children
- Authors/Creators
- G. Roberts (Author/Creator)M. Anderson (Author/Creator)
- Publication Details
- Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Vol.120, pp.59-72
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Identifiers
- 991005543264507891
- Copyright
- Elsvier
- Murdoch Affiliation
- School of Psychology and Exercise Science
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article
Metrics
262 File views/ downloads
96 Record Views
InCites Highlights
These are selected metrics from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool, related to this output
- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- Citation topics
- 1 Clinical & Life Sciences
- 1.7 Neuroscanning
- 1.7.1026 Intelligence
- Web Of Science research areas
- Psychology, Developmental
- Psychology, Experimental
- ESI research areas
- Psychiatry/Psychology