Don’t forget your lunch: Age and individual differences in how children perform everyday tasks

Abstract

Performing everyday tasks well is important for children’s success in the home and classroom and thought to rely on cognitive processes as studied in lab-based paradigms. There has been much interest in the link between executive function (EF) and children’s achievements in real world settings. Little is known about how children’s EF is related to their capacity to complete everyday tasks typical in real world settings. There is no gold standard for measuring how children complete everyday tasks. We developed a real world paradigm in which a group of 6- to 7-year-old and a group of 8- to 10-year-old children (N = 50) were provided instructions to complete routine tasks typical of daily life in a “lab house”, such as gathering homework to prepare for a day at school. To examine the link between EF and performance on the everyday tasks, we measured children’s EF using the Minnesota Executive Function Scale (MEFS). To examine the role of attention to the instructions to performance on the everyday tasks, children were fitted with a mobile eye tracker and looking time to the visual aids the instructions were displayed upon was extracted. Results showed children completed the everyday tasks more accurately and efficiently with age. Individual differences in EF and more looking time to visual aids while instructions were provided accounted for children’s performance above and beyond age. The real world paradigm provides a new platform for investigating how EF is used while completing everyday tasks and developing new methods to foster success.