Perceptual biases during cued task switching relate to decision process differences between children and adults

Previous work suggests that children engage preparatory processing differently than adults in cued task switching. One potential consequence is that they are differentially biased by visual properties of the stimuli, e.g., target-choice similarity. We tested this possibility in 215 children and young adults ranging from 6 to 27 years of age. Participants played a cue-target game with varying levels of working memory (WM) and attentional demand where they matched multidimensional stimuli according to a cued dimension. Younger age, low WM demand, and matching fine grained dimensions (i.e. pattern) increased the bias of target-choice similarity on task performance. Older age, high WM, and matching global dimensions (i.e. shape) mitigated the bias. Developmental transitions to adult performance differed by task demands but generally occurred during early adolescence. A drift diffusion analysis revealed age and task differences in decision making strategies consistent with how similarity impacted task performance, indicating that, especially with low WM demand, children made impulsive, similarity-driven decisions. Our findings support the idea that children engage in preparation strategies that exacerbate perceptual biases on task performance; improvements are observed with age or through changes in task structure and stimuli. These results have implications for interpreting cognitive control performance in children

先前的研究表明，儿童在提示任务切换中的预备处理方式与成人存在差异。一种可能的后果是，他们在刺激的视觉属性上存在不同的偏差，例如目标选择相似性。我们在6至27岁的215名儿童和年轻人中测试了这一可能性。参与者进行了一种带有不同工作记忆（WM）和注意力需求水平的提示-目标游戏，根据提示维度匹配多维刺激。年龄较小、WM需求较低以及匹配精细粒度维度（即模式）会增加目标选择相似性对任务表现的偏差。年龄较大、WM较高以及匹配全局维度（即形状）会减轻这种偏差。成人表现的发展过渡因任务需求而异，但通常发生在青春期早期。漂移扩散分析揭示了决策策略在年龄和任务方面的差异，这与相似性如何影响任务表现一致，表明，尤其是在WM需求较低的情况下，儿童会做出冲动、受相似性驱动的决策。我们的研究结果支持了这样的观点，即儿童会参与加剧任务表现中感知偏差的预备策略；随着年龄的增长或任务结构和刺激的改变，观察到改进。这些结果对解释儿童认知控制表现具有重要意义。