Developmental Differences in Cognitive Control: Goal Representation and Maintenance During a Continuous Performance Task

Abstract

The present study examined whether younger and older children differ in the use of the goal-related information in a continuous performance task (AX-CPT), and if so, whether those age differences are due to the ability to represent and/or maintain goal information. Experiment 1 compared third- and sixth-grade children in their ability to transform the identity of letter cues into goal representations, as well as to sustain those goal representations during a long (5,500 ms) cue-probe delay in the AX-CPT. Experiment 2 used a short cue-probe delay (1,000 ms) and thereby eliminated the demands of maintaining goal representations in working memory. In addition, Experiment 2 varied the level of demand that was placed on the ability to represent context information by varying the features of letter cues. The combined results of these experiments indicated that sixth graders were superior to third graders in cognitive control under conditions that placed demands on either the ability to represent or maintain goal-related information.