Age-related changes in task switching costs in middle childhood

VERNUCCI, SANTIAGO; GARCÍA CONI, ANA; ZAMORA, ELIANA VANESA; GELPI-TRUDO, ROSARIO; ANDRÉS, MARÍA LAURA; CANET-JURIC, LORENA

Journal of Cognition and Development

Taylor and Francis

Año: 2022

1524-8372

Cognitive flexibility refers to the ability to rapidly and accurately switch between tasks. It isregarded as a core dimension of executive functions and has been reported to improve duringchildhood and into early adulthood. For its evaluation, the task-switching paradigm is widelyused. 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 analyzingswitching performance in children than in other age groups, and few studies have specificallyanalyzed switching costs only in school-age children. In the present study, we aimed toanalyze age-related changes in task switching in children aged 9–12 years old. We consideredyear-to-year changes in performance, specifically in response time based mixing costs, globalswitch costs, and local switch costs. To do this, we used a task switching measure to evaluate231 children aged 9–12 years (M age = 10.94, SD = 0.88) who were aggregated into four agegroups (9, 10, 11, and 12 years old). Results show consistent mixing costs, global switchcosts, and local switch costs at each age. However, we did not find age-related differences inthe magnitude of such costs. These results suggest that both the ability to maintain and selectbetween two tasks, and to switch from one response set to another could be consideredrelatively constant during this period.