Abstract
As children become older, they better maintain task-relevant information in preparation of upcoming cognitive demands. This is referred to as proactive control, which is a key component of cognitive control development. However, it is still uncertain whether children engage in proactive control consistently across different contexts and how proactive control relates to academic abilities. This study used two common tasks—the AX Continuous Performance Task (AX-CPT) and the Cued Task-Switching Paradigm (CTS)—to examine whether proactive control engagement in 102 children (age range: 6.91–10.91 years) converges between the two tasks and predicts academic abilities. Proactive control indices modestly correlated between tasks in higher but not lower working-memory children, suggesting that consistency in proactive control engagement across contexts is relatively low during childhood but increases with working memory capacity. Further, working memory (but not verbal speed) predicted proactive control engagement in both tasks. While proactive control as measured by each task predicted math and reading performance, only proactive control measured by CTS additionally predicted reasoning, suggesting that proactive control can be used as a proxy for academic achievements.
Highlights
Cognitive control is an important aspect of goal-directed behaviour which allows flexible adaptation to changing environments
20 data points were excluded for the AX Continuous Performance Task (AX-CPT) task (3364 vs. 3384 data points) and 4 data points were excluded in the Cued Task-Switching Paradigm (CTS) task (14,223 vs. 14,227 data points)
As the proactive control index of CTS based on reaction time and d’-context derived from AX-CPT showed the highest reliability and correlated with each other, we focused on these two indices of proactive control in subsequent analyses, which examined the predictive role of age and working memory on proactive control engagement, and how proactive control indices may predict academic abilities
Summary
Cognitive control is an important aspect of goal-directed behaviour which allows flexible adaptation to changing environments. On the other hand, is a late correction mechanism that involves overcoming interference after an event has occurred In this case, children may open their umbrella only after they have noticed that they are getting wet. Around the age of five or six, children gradually transition from primarily relying on reactive control to using either form of control depending on the context (Blackwell & Munakata, 2014; Chevalier, Martis, Curran, & Munakata, 2015; Gonthier, Zira, Colé, & Blaye, 2019; Lucenet & Blaye, 2014) It is still unknown how consistently children engage proactive control across contexts where proactive control is beneficial, especially during the period where children begin to use the two modes of control flexibly. We investigated the predictive power of proactive control on academic achievements over the effects of working
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