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The aim of the study was to examine whether cognitive skills are related to persistence. Thus, children's (N = 157, mean age: 5.9 years) persistent and non‐persistent behaviours (i.e., cheating and off‐task) were assessed in an unsolvable task. Additionally, we assessed children's executive functions and temperament. Analysis for persistence showed that cognitive inhibition and cognitive flexibility predicted children's persistent behaviour, beyond age and temperament. Analyses for non‐persistent behaviours revealed that temperament and weak executive functions predicted cheating, while age predicted off‐task behaviour. Statement of contributionWhat is already known on this subject?So far, persistence has been conceptualized as a temperamental sub‐dimension of self‐regulation.What does this study add?A child's persistence depends not only on temperament but also on cognitive inhibition and cognitive flexibility.There are qualitative differences between the two non‐persistent behaviours cheating and off‐task.While cheating is related to weaker cognitive skills, off‐task behaviour seems mainly age‐related. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the effects of two context variables, presentation format (icon arrays or numerical frequencies) and time limitation (limited or unlimited time), on the proportional reasoning abilities of children aged 7 and 10 years, as well as adults. Participants had to select, between two sets of tokens, the one that offered the highest likelihood of drawing a gold token, that is, the set of elements with the greater proportion of gold tokens. Results show that participants performed better in the unlimited time condition. Moreover, besides a general developmental improvement in accuracy, our results show that younger children performed better when proportions were presented as icon arrays, whereas older children and adults were similarly accurate in the two presentation format conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Executive functions or cognitive self-regulatory control processes are critical for children's ability to successfully navigate their academic and social environment. In this study, we focused on the development of one critical executive function skill, that of inhibitory control. In a longitudinal study, we tested 96 children at 24, 30, 36, 50, and 60 months of age with age-appropriate measures of inhibition. We found evidence for the developmental stability of inhibitory abilities. Inhibitory control at 30 months of age was strongly related to inhibitory control at 60 months of age even when verbal IQ was partialled out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]