Sequential modulations of executive control processes throughout lifespan in numerosity comparison

Abstract

The present research aimed at determining (a) whether participants modulate executive control processes from one item to the next when they accomplish numerosity comparison tasks, and (b) how these modulations change across the lifespan. We tested sequential modulations of congruency effects in participants of different age groups. Sequential modulations of congruency effects refer to decreased congruency effects (i.e., poorer performance on incongruent items relative to congruent items) following incongruent items compared to after congruent items. Children (8-year-olds, 10-year-olds, and 13-year-olds), younger (18–30-year-olds) and older adults (65–94-year-olds) accomplished a dot comparison task. They were presented two collections of dots and had to decide which collection included the largest number of dots. Results showed that congruency effects were smaller on current items following incongruent items (i.e., visual feature mismatched numerosity) than after congruent items (i.e., visual feature matched numerosity) in 13-year-old-children, as well as in young and older adults. In 8-year-old-children, reverse sequential modulations of congruency effects were observed (i.e., congruency effects on current items increased following incongruent items), while congruency effects on current items were not different after congruent and incongruent items in 10-year-old-children. Finally, age-related differences in sequential modulations of congruency effects depend on efficiency of participants’ executive control processes. These findings have important implications to further our understanding on how domain-general mechanisms contribute to numerosity comparison performance, and how such contribution changes across the lifespan.