| The theory of cognitive complexity and control claims that there are domain general changes in the complexity of rule systems that children can represent at different ages (Zelazo & Frye, 1997). Thus, as children age, changes in behavioural control can be explained by the ability to represent increasingly complex rule systems. This theory makes strong claims of the developmental coherence of performance across different types of tasks. Thus, to confirm the domain generality of rule-use and reasoning abilities, children's performance at different ages should be similar across logically equivalent tasks. The purpose of this study was to examine the applicability of the CCC theory to domain of language processing. This study was a mixed 2 (age; 3 & 4 year olds) x 2 (task; card sort and language task) x 3 (phase) design with age and the card sort task as between-subjects variables, and phase and two versions of a language processing task, a sentence set with similarly valenced actions and an opposite-valence version, as within-subjects variables. In the card sort task, children sorted cards alternating by shape and colour in three phases. The language task was developed to mimic the logical structure of the card sort and asks the children to act out sentences involving different social acts between two characters. For both tasks, children's performance differed across phase with children making perseverative errors in the third phase. There was an age-related difference in the card sort but not the language task with 3-year-olds performing worse than 4-year-olds. In addition, analysis revealed that the card sort task was significantly correlated with the similar-valence version of the language task but not the opposite-valence version. |
