ABSTRACT

Cognitive flexibility refers to the ability to rapidly and accurately switch between tasks. It is regarded as a core dimension of executive functions and has been reported to improve during childhood and into early adulthood. For its evaluation, the task-switching paradigm is widely used. Switching between tasks or response sets imposes a series of costs on performance (i.e., mixing costs, global switch costs, local switch costs). There is less evidence analyzing switching performance in children than in other age groups, and few studies have specifically analyzed switching costs only in school-age children. In the present study, we aimed to analyze age-related changes in task switching in children aged 9–12 years old. We considered year-to-year changes in performance, specifically in response time based mixing costs, global switch costs, and local switch costs. To do this, we used a task switching measure to evaluate 231 children in Argentina, aged 9–12 years (M age = 10.94, SD = 0.88) who were aggregated into four age groups (9, 10, 11, and 12 years old). Results show consistent mixing costs, global switch costs, and local switch costs at each age. However, we did not find age-related differences in the magnitude of such costs. These results suggest that both the ability to maintain and select between two tasks, and to switch from one response set to another could be considered relatively constant during this period.

摘要

认知灵活性是指快速、准确地在任务之间切换的能力。它被认为是执行功能的核心维度，据报道在儿童期和成年早期会得到改善。对于其评估，任务切换范式被广泛使用。任务或响应集之间的切换会给性能带来一系列成本（即混合成本、全局切换成本、本地切换成本）。与其他年龄组相比，分析儿童转换表现的证据较少，而且很少有研究专门分析学龄儿童的转换成本。在本研究中，我们旨在分析 9-12 岁儿童任务切换中与年龄相关的变化。我们考虑了性能的逐年变化，特别是基于响应时间的混合成本、全局切换成本、和本地交换成本。为此，我们使用任务切换措施对阿根廷 231 名 9-12 岁的儿童进行了评估（M年龄 = 10.94，SD  = 0.88），他们被汇总为四个年龄组（9、10、11 和 12 岁）。结果显示每个年龄段的混合成本、全局转换成本和局部转换成本是一致的。然而，我们没有发现此类成本的大小与年龄相关的差异。这些结果表明，在此期间，维持和在两项任务之间进行选择以及从一个响应集切换到另一个响应集的能力可以被认为是相对恒定的。