Encouraging performance monitoring promotes proactive control in children

Hadley, Lauren V.; Acluche, Frantzy; Chevalier, Nicolas

Abstract

Monitoring progression towards one’s goals is essential for efficient cognitive control. Immature performance monitoring may contribute to suboptimal cognitive control engagement in childhood, potentially explaining why children engage control reactively even when proactive control would be more effective. The present study investigated whether encouraging children to actively monitor their performance results in more mature control engagement. EEG data were collected while children and adults performed a flanker task in three conditions in which they were provided no feedback, standard feedback, or were asked to estimate their own feedback. Both age groups accurately estimated their own feedback. Critically, feedback estimation promoted online performance monitoring and proactive engagement of attention and inhibition during the flanker period in children. These findings indicate that proactive control engagement in childhood can be effectively supported by encouraging performance monitoring.

Citation

Hadley, L. V., Acluche, F., & Chevalier, N. (2020). Encouraging performance monitoring promotes proactive control in children. Developmental Science, 23(1), https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12861

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 9, 2019
• Online Publication Date: May 20, 2019
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2020
• Deposit Date: May 24, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: May 24, 2019
• Journal: Developmental Science
• Print ISSN: 1363-755X
• Electronic ISSN: 1467-7687
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 23
• Issue: 1
• Article Number: e12861
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12861
• Keywords: Cognitive control; Performance monitoring; Children; Proactive control; Inhibition; Event-related potentials
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2088284
• Publisher URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/desc.12861?af=R