The Effect of Hot Executive Function on Children's Test with the Standard Windows Task

Abstract

The windows task, a nonverbal measure, which was first used by Russell in 1991, is used to test children's strategic deception. Investigators such as Russell J, Hala S, and Carlson S M explored how the inhibitory control skill influenced 3- to 4-year-old children's performance on the windows task. Their results revealed that younger children were incapable of strategic deception. Moreover, reducing the difficulty of the executive demands could make the children improve performance on all 20 of their trials but not the first one. However, some researchers suggested that it was the ability to rule inference or theory of mind that challenged the young children. Thus, there were different arguments about why the children could not succeed in the windows task. In our opinion, the hot executive function may play an important role in children's performance on the test, because in the windows task, candies constitute the treat and encourage the children to compete with the opponent, who was played by experimenter 2. Our study tried to separate hot executive function factors from cool executive function factors concerning the windows task to examine whether and how the hot executive function factors affected children's performance on the task test. Further, it was hypothesized that emphasizing on the competition would cause the children to perform much worse. The experiment used a 3 × 3 between-group design. There were three experimental conditions as follows: standard condition, emphasized competition condition, and no-opponent condition. The experiment involved 270 participants, who were divided into 3 age groups. The experiment aimed to explore the cognitive development of 3- to 4-year-old children. Each condition included a training phase and a testing phase. Only the participants who passed the training phase could participate in the testing phase. The training phase was included to ensure that the children understood both the required response modes and the rules for winning the treat from the opponent. The response modes of the training phase matched those of the experimental conditions. Chi-Square analyses revealed that there were significant differences among the first trial performance of the three age groups as well as three conditions (age groups: χ²(2) = 28.665, p < 0.001; conditions: χ²(2) = 8.305, p < 0.05); however, the non-group performed higher than the random level on the first trial. The 3 (age groups) ×3 (experimental conditions) two-way ANOVA analyses revealed that the main effects of both age groups and experimental conditions were significant (p < 0.001), and the interaction between them was salient (p < 0.05). Further, the simple effect analyses displayed that the three age groups performed differently in each condition, and the three conditions revealed differences in performance in each age group. The following conclusions were drawn: (1) hot executive function factors such as competition, treat, and emotions/motivation challenged the young children on the windows task; (2) the late 3-year-olds (about 3 years and 9 months old) represented the age boundary between 3- to 4-year-olds with regard to the windows task test; and (3) 3- to 4-year-old children demonstrated some cognitive development tendencies in the windows task, such as the capacity of rule inference and inhibitory control skill. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (journal abstract)