Do 3-Year-Olds' Difficulties In Reverse-reward Contingency Task Lie In Rule Reasoning Or Prepotency Inhibition?

It has been proved that 3-year-old children have difficulties in reverse-reward contingency task. Several researches declared that children's difficulties lies in their insufficient abilities to inhibit prepotent responses while some others reckoned that children's failures was caused by their inability to refer the task rule. Concluding the previous researches, we considered that it was the object which children desired that probably evoked children's prepotent responses, resulting in kids'failures on the task. Therefore, in current study, we employed window task as typical representative of reverse-reward contingency task and classified it into two categories, that is, standard window task and prepotency-eliminated window task. Combined with transfer manipulation invented by Carroll, Apperly & Riggs (2007)[1], we aimed to investigate the core reason of 3-year-olds'difficulties in reverse-reward contingency task.Three experiments were contained in our study. Experiment 1 was consist of standard window task, prepotency-eliminated window task and mixed window task in which transfer manipulation made by Carroll, et al. (2007)[1] was included. Exp.l aimed to explore (1) whether eliminating prepotency could significantly impact on 3-year-olds'performances on window task, (2) and what essence lay in prepotency elimination if such manipulation worked, rule reasoning or inhibitory ability. Experiment 2 employed reverse-mixed window task associated with standard and mixed window task in Exp.1, investigating whether transfer manipulation might result in inaccurate data due to its potential disadvantages which probably lead to children's confusion in task rules. Based on the result of Exp.2, short-study-term and standard-study-term versions of window task banded together in Experiment 3, the purpose of which was to discuss whether the shortages of transfer manipulation could be conquered according to inhibition account. Conclusions were suggested as follows:(1) 3-year-olds'achievements in prepotency-eliminated window task were obviously better than those in standard window task, indicating that prepotent responses induced by what children desired did result in children's failures in reverse-reward contingency task. Decreasing or eliminating such prepotency could improve children's performances on the similar types of tasks.(2) Transfer manipulation could not be used to explore whether 3-year-olds'difficulties in reverse-reward contingency task were related to rule reasoning or inhibitory ability, because such paradigm itself contained possibilities leading to children's confusion in task rules. The data collected through such paradigm were therefore probably incorrect and could not be used in prospective researches.(3) Original transfer manipulation could not be modified and developed based on inhibition account, because children's performances kept almost unaltered no matter how long they studied the former rules. It was suggested that only did we seek more effective paradigms or some methods that virtually worked for manipulation improvement could we make true conclusions...