| The dimensional change card sorting(DCCS)task has been widely used to assess cognitive flexibility in children.However,the DCCS task is challenging for children under three years of age.The present study aimed to investigate the cognitive flexibility of three-year-olds in a stepwise rule induction task(sRIT),in which children are encouraged to switch attention to the new rule and then inhibit the old one.In Experiment 1,children aged 2.5–3.5 years were asked to select the candy-containing target box from nine pairs of boxes presented progressively.When children established a rule,for example,considering that boxes with cylindrical shapes contain candy,they were encouraged to switch rules by the experimenter who provided a reason(e.g.,explaining that not the shape but a particular pattern of the box determined the presence of candy).The results indicated that most three-year-olds could switch to new rules and implicitly inhibit the interference of old rules.In Experiment 2,children participated in both the sRIT and DCCS tasks,and the results of the correlation analysis showed a positive correlation between the scores of rule generalization in the sRIT and the DCCS scores,implying that rule inhibition played an essential role in both tasks.In order to improve the task,Experiment 3 introduced feedback to the first phase of the sRIT.The outcomes indicated that more research is needed to clarify the role of feedback.These results confirm that the development of inhibitory control plays a vital role in children’s cognitive flexibility. |
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