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Prenatal processes are likely critical for the differences in cognitive ability and disease risk that unfold in postnatal life. Prenatally established cortical folding patterns are increasingly studied as an adult proxy for earlier development events - under the as yet untested assumption that an individual's folding pattern is developmentally fixed. Here, we provide the first empirical test of this stability assumption using 263 longitudinally-acquired structural MRI brain scans from 75 typically developing individuals spanning ages 7 to 32 years. We focus on the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) - an intensely studied cortical region that presents two qualitatively distinct and reliably classifiable sulcal patterns with links to postnatal behavior. We show - without exception-that individual ACC sulcal patterns are fixed from childhood to adulthood, at the same time that quantitative anatomical ACC metrics are undergoing profound developmental change. Our findings buttress use of folding typology as a postnatally-stable marker for linking variations in early brain development to later neurocognitive outcomes in ex utero life.

Most children under 7 years of age presented with 10 daisies and 2 roses fail to indicate that there are more flowers than daisies. Instead of the appropriate comparison of the relative numerosities of the superordinate class (flowers) to its subordinate class (daisies), they perform a direct perceptual comparison of the extensions of the 2 subordinate classes (daisies vs. roses). In our experiment, we investigated whether increasing efficiency in solving the Piagetian class-inclusion task is related to increasing efficiency in the ability to resist (inhibit) this direct comparison of the subordinate classes' extensions. Ten-year-old and young adult participants performed a computerized priming version of a Piaget-like class-inclusion task. The experimental design was such that the misleading perceptual strategy to inhibit on the prime (in which a superordinate class had to be compared with a subordinate class) became a congruent strategy to activate on the probe (in which the two subordinate classes' extensions were directly compared). We found a negative priming effect of 291 ms in children and 129 ms in adults. These results provide evidence for the first time (a) that adults still need to inhibit the comparison of the subordinate classes' extensions in class-inclusion tasks and (b) that the ability to inhibit this heuristic increases with age (resulting in a lower executive cost). Taken together, these findings provide additional support for the neo-Piagetian approach of cognitive development that suggests that the acquisition of increasingly complex knowledge is based on the ability to resist (inhibit) heuristics and previously acquired knowledge.

Prenatal processes are likely critical for the differences in cognitive ability and disease risk that unfold in postnatal life. Prenatally established cortical folding patterns are increasingly studied as an adult proxy for earlier development events – under the as yet untested assumption that an individual's folding pattern is developmentally fixed. Here, we provide the first empirical test of this stability assumption using 263 longitudinally-acquired structural MRI brain scans from 75 typically developing individuals spanning ages 7 to 32 years. We focus on the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) – an intensely studied cortical region that presents two qualitatively distinct and reliably classifiable sulcal patterns with links to postnatal behavior. We show – without exception–that individual ACC sulcal patterns are fixed from childhood to adulthood, at the same time that quantitative anatomical ACC metrics are undergoing profound developmental change. Our findings buttress use of folding typology as a postnatally-stable marker for linking variations in early brain development to later neurocognitive outcomes in ex utero life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Reading relies on a left-lateralized network of brain areas that include the pre-lexical processing regions of the ventral stream. Specifically, a region in the left lateral occipitotemporal sulcus ( OTS) is consistently more activated for visual presentations of words than for other categories of stimuli. This region undergoes dramatic changes at the functional and structural levels when children learn to read, but little is known about the effects of early cerebral constraints on reading skills. Using anatomical magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated whether the sulcal pattern of the lateral OTS-a stable brain feature-was associated with oral reading skills. The sulcal pattern of the left but not the right lateral OTS was associated with the number of words correctly read in 3 min. This study is the first to evidence that reading is affected by early cerebral constraints, such as the sulcal morphology of the left lateral OTS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Difficulties in cognitive control are related to several psychiatric conditions. [•] Inhibitory control (IC) of children predicts academic and professional successes. [•] ACC sulcal patterns at age 5 were related to IC efficiency at age 5 (Stroop scores). [•] ACC sulcal patterns at age 5 explained IC efficiency at age 9 (Stroop scores). [•] ACC sulcal patterns constrain IC efficiency during childhood. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• The horizontal segment of intraparietal sulcus (HIPS) is one of the key functional regions for processing numbers. • Sulcal morphology is a qualitative feature of the brain determined in-utero and not affected by brain maturation and learning. • The HIPS sulcal pattern explains part of the variance in participant's symbolic number comparison and math fluency abilities. • Participant's non-symbolic number comparison abilities was not explained by HIPS sulcal pattern. • This association between HIPS sulcal pattern and symbolic number abilities was stable from childhood to young adulthood. Understanding the constraints, including biological ones, that may influence mathematical development is of great importance because math ability is a key predictor of career success, income and even psychological well-being. While research in developmental cognitive neuroscience of mathematics has extensively studied the key functional regions for processing numbers, particularly the horizontal segment of intraparietal sulcus (HIPS), few studies have investigated the effects of early cerebral constraints on later mathematical abilities. In this pre-registered study, we investigated whether variability of the sulcal pattern of the HIPS, a qualitative feature of the brain determined in-utero and not affected by brain maturation and learning, accounts for individual difference in symbolic and non-symbolic number abilities. Seventy-seven typically developing school-aged children and 21 young adults participated in our study. We found that the HIPS sulcal pattern, (a) explains part of the variance in participant's symbolic number comparison and math fluency abilities, and (b) that this association between HIPS sulcal pattern and symbolic number abilities was found to be stable from childhood to young adulthood. However, (c) we did not find an association between participant's non-symbolic number abilities and HIPS sulcal morphology. Our findings suggest that early cerebral constraints may influence individual difference in math abilities, in addition to the well-established neuroplastic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inhibitory control (IC) can occur either in a neutral context (cool) or in social contexts involving emotions (hot). Cool and hot IC have specific developmental trajectories; cool IC develops linearly from childhood to adulthood, whereas hot IC follows a quadratic trajectory. Some activities can improve the IC, such as cognitive training (CT) and mindfulness meditation (MM). The aim of our study was to compare the effects of 5 weeks of computerized MM versus CT on IC performance in 66 children (9-10 years old) and 63 adolescents (16-17 years old) by specifically analyzing cool and hot dimensions in the same participants and from a developmental perspective. We fit a linear mixed-effect model on the Stroop interference score with time (pretest vs. posttest) and type of conflict (cool vs. hot) as within-participant factors and intervention group (CT vs. MM) and age group (child vs. adolescent) as between-participant factors. The findings revealed that children but not adolescents benefitted from interventions. More specifically, CT improved cool IC but not hot IC, whereas MM practice improved hot IC but not cool IC. This study supports the benefits of MM at a young age. Theoretical issues linking MM programs to emotional competence grounded in hot IC skills are considered in academic settings., (Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Inhibitory control (IC) plays a critical role in cognitive and socio-emotional development. IC relies on a lateralized cortico-subcortical brain network including the inferior frontal cortex, anterior parts of insula, anterior cingulate cortex, caudate nucleus and putamen. Brain asymmetries play a critical role for IC efficiency. In parallel to age-related changes, IC can be improved following training. The aim of this study was to (1) assess the lateralization of IC network in children (N = 60, 9-10 y.o.) and (2) examine possible changes in neural asymmetry of this network from anatomical (structural MRI) and functional (resting-state fMRI) levels after 5-week computerized IC vs. active control (AC) training. We observed that IC training, but not AC training, led to a leftward lateralization of the putamen anatomy, similarly to what is observed in adults, supporting that training could accelerate the maturation of this structure., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Background: One in 7 children will need general anesthesia (GA) before the age of 3. Brain toxicity of anesthetics is controversial. Our objective was to clarify whether exposure of GA to the developing brain could lead to lasting behavioral and structural brain changes., Methods: A first study was performed in mice. The behaviors (fear conditioning, Y-maze, and actimetry) and brain anatomy (high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging) of 6- to 8-week-old Swiss mice exposed or not exposed to GA from 4 to 10 days old were evaluated. A second study was a complementary analysis from the preexisting APprentissages EXécutifs et cerveau chez les enfants d'âge scolaire (APEX) cohort to assess the replicability of our data in humans. The behaviors (behavior rating inventory of executive function, emotional control, and working memory score, Backward Digit Span, and Raven 36) and brain anatomy (high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging) were compared in 102 children 9 to 10 years of age exposed or not exposed to a single GA (surgery) during infancy., Results: The animal study revealed chronic exacerbated fear behavior in the adult mice (95% confidence interval [CI], 4-80; P = .03) exposed to postnatal GA; this was associated with an 11% (95% CI, 7.5-14.5) reduction of the periaqueductal gray matter (P = .046). The study in humans suggested lower emotional control (95% CI, 0.33-9.10; P = .06) and a 6.1% (95% CI, 4.3-7.8) reduction in the posterior part of the right inferior frontal gyrus (P = .019) in the children who had been exposed to a single GA procedure., Conclusions: The preclinical and clinical findings of these independent studies suggest lasting effects of early life exposure to anesthetics on later emotional control behaviors and brain structures., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2022 International Anesthesia Research Society.)

Attributing affectively neutral mental states such as thoughts (i.e., cool theory of mind, cool ToM) to others appears to be rooted in different processes than the ones involved in attributing affectively charged mental states such as emotions (i.e., hot ToM) to others. However, no study has investigated the developmental pattern of hot and cool ToM abilities using a similar task and the relative contribution of cool and hot inhibitory control (IC) to cool and hot ToM development. To do so, we tested 112 children aged 3.5 to 6.5 years on a cool and a hot version of a ToM task and on a cool and hot version of an IC task. We found that hot ToM abilities developed more rapidly than cool ToM. Importantly, we found that hot IC abilities mediated the relation between age and hot ToM abilities. Taken together, our results suggest that the ability to attribute emotions to others develops more rapidly than the ability to attribute thoughts and that the growing efficiency of hot ToM with age is specifically rooted in the growing efficiency of hot IC abilities., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Classical neuropsychological assessments are designed to explore cognitive brain functions using paper-and-pencil or digital tests. The purpose of this study was to design and to test a new protocol named the "Virtual House Locomotor Maze" (VHLM) for studying inhibitory control as well as mental flexibility using a visuo-spatial locomotor memory test. The VHLM is a simple maze including six houses using the technology of the Virtual Carpet Paradigm ™ . Ten typical development children (TD) were enrolled in this study. The participants were instructed to reach a target house as quickly as possible and to bear in mind the experimental instructions. We examined their planning and replanning abilities to take the shortest path to reach a target house. In order to study the cognitive processes during navigation, we implemented a spatio-temporal index based on the measure of kinematics behaviors (i.e., trajectories, tangential velocity and head direction). Replanning was tested by first repeating a path chosen by the subject to reach a given house. After learning this path, it was blocked imposing that the subject inhibited the learned trajectory and designed a new trajectory to reach the same house. We measured the latency of the departure after the presentation of each house and the initial direction of the trajectory. The results suggest that several strategies are used by the subjects for replanning and our measures could be used as an index of impulsivity., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Castilla, Borst, Cohen, Fradin, Lefrançois, Houdé, Zaoui and Berthoz.)

Intuitive conceptions represent common obstacles to conceptual learning in science. A growing number of studies demonstrate that when learning occurs, these intuitive conceptions are not replaced by scientific conceptions but rather coexist with them and thus need to be inhibited to prevent systematic errors. However, to date no study has demonstrated that the increasing ability to mobilize a given scientific conception is rooted in the increasing ability to inhibit the intuitive conception that interferes with it. In the current study, we investigated whether the increasing ability from childhood to adulthood to solve a scientific problem regarding the buoyancy of marbles of different sizes and densities is rooted in the increasing ability to inhibit the "bigger objects sink more" intuitive conception. To do so, we designed a negative priming paradigm in which 11-year-old children, 17-year-old adolescents, and 24-year-old adults were asked to choose which of two marbles of various sizes and densities sinks more. Negative priming effects reported in children and adolescents suggest that, unlike adults, they must inhibit the "bigger objects sink more" intuitive conception to determine, for instance, that a small marble with high density (e.g., small lead marble) will sink more than a bigger marble with a lower density (e.g., big wooden marble). We also found that the amplitude of negative priming effects decreased with age, suggesting that the level of exposition to the scientific knowledge of buoyancy (increasing with age) may decrease the need to inhibit the "bigger objects sink more" intuitive conception., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

A number of training interventions have been designed to improve executive functions and inhibitory control (IC) across the lifespan. Surprisingly, no study has investigated the structural neuroplasticity induced by IC training from childhood to late adolescence, a developmental period characterized by IC efficiency improvement and protracted maturation of prefrontal cortex (PFC) subregions involved in IC. The aim of the present study was to investigate the behavioral and structural changes induced by a 5-week computerized and adaptive IC training in school-aged children (10-year-olds) and in adolescents (16-year-olds). Sixty-four children and 59 adolescents were randomly assigned to an IC (i.e. Color-Word Stroop and Stop-Signal tasks) or an active control (AC) (knowledge- and vocabulary-based tasks) training group. In the pre- and posttraining sessions, participants performed the Color-Word Stroop and Stop-signal tasks, and an anatomical resonance imaging (MRI) was acquired for each of them. Children's IC efficiency improved from the pre- to the posttraining session in boys but not in girls. In adolescents, IC efficiency did not improve after IC training. Similar to the neuroplastic mechanisms observed during brain maturation, we observed IC training-related changes in cortical thickness and cortical surface area in several PFC subregions (e.g. the pars opercularis, triangularis, and orbitalis of the inferior frontal gyri) that were age- and gender-specific. Because no correction for multiple comparisons was applied, the results of our study provide only preliminary evidence of the complex structural neuroplastic mechanisms at the root of behavioral changes in IC efficiency from pre- to posttraining in school-aged children and adolescents., (© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Visual scenes are processed in terms of spatial frequencies. Low spatial frequencies (LSF) carry coarse information, whereas high spatial frequencies (HSF) subsequently carry information about fine details. The present magnetic resonance imaging study investigated how cortical thickness covaried with LSF/HSF processing abilities in ten-year-old children and adults. Participants indicated whether natural scenes that were filtered in either LSF or HSF represented outdoor or indoor scenes, while reaction times (RTs) and accuracy measures were recorded. In adults, faster RTs for LSF and HSF images were consistently associated with a thicker cortex (parahippocampal cortex, middle frontal gyrus, and precentral and insula regions for LSF; parahippocampal cortex and fronto-marginal and supramarginal gyri for HSF). On the other hand, in children, faster RTs for HSF were associated with a thicker cortex (posterior cingulate, supramarginal and calcarine cortical regions), whereas faster RTs for LSF were associated with a thinner cortex (subcallosal and insula regions). Increased cortical thickness in adults and children could correspond to an expansion mechanism linked to visual scene processing efficiency. In contrast, lower cortical thickness associated with LSF efficiency in children could correspond to a pruning mechanism reflecting an ongoing maturational process, in agreement with the view that LSF efficiency continues to be refined during childhood. This differing pattern between children and adults appeared to be particularly significant in anterior regions of the brain, in line with the proposed existence of a postero-anterior gradient of brain development. Taken together, our results highlight the dynamic brain processes that allow children and adults to perceive a visual natural scene in a coherent way.

Jean Piaget's theory is a central reference point in the study of normal development in children. He proposed in the 20th century that distinct stages occur in the development of intellectual abilities from the preoperational period (intuitive stage: 4-7 years old) to the second stage of conceptual intelligence. One of the most famous Piagetian tasks is number conservation. Failures and successes in this task reveal two fundamental stages in children's thinking and judgment, shifting at approximately 7 years of age from visuospatial intuition to logico-mathematical operation (i.e., number conservation). New emerging techniques in the 21st century, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, can support this preeminent theory with an understanding of the cerebral basis of the various stages. Since these new technologies are considered to be invasive in children, such techniques are subject to ethical views and concerns due to pediatric participants. The chapter discusses a brain imaging study on Piaget's conservation-of-number task, showing what can be accomplished through careful ethical considerations in the context of healthy children with normal cognitive development., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

There is a close relation between spatial and numerical representations which can lead to interference as in Piaget's number conservation task or in the numerical Stroop task. Using a negative priming (NP) paradigm, we investigated whether the interference between spatial and numerical processing extends to more complex arithmetic processing by asking 12 year olds and adults to compare the magnitude of decimal numbers (i.e., the prime) and, subsequently, the length of two lines or the luminance of two circles (i.e., the probe). We found NP effects when participants compare length but not luminance. Our finding suggests that decimal comparison is impacted by a visuospatial bias due to the interference between the magnitude of the numbers to be compared and their physical length. We discuss the educational implications of these findings.

Adapting a numerical comparison task to a negative priming paradigm, we aimed to provide new evidence that inhibitory control processes are involved in numerical comparison. We observed negative priming effects in both 7- to 8-year-olds (n = 47, M age  = 7.92 years) and adults (n = 33, M age  = 27.86 years), confirming that inhibition of irrelevant dimensions of magnitude is needed in numerical estimation at both ages. In addition, the amplitude of the negative priming effect was larger in children, in line with recent accounts suggesting that numerical development is rooted in part in the improvement of inhibitory control abilities. Our findings have educational implications for the investigation of the predictive values of numerical intuitions and executive functions for math achievement., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

In Piaget's theory of number development, children do not possess a true concept of number until they are able to reason on numerical quantity regardless of changes in other nonnumerical magnitudes, such as length. Recent studies have echoed this result by arguing that abstracting number from nonnumerical dimensions of magnitude is a developmental milestone and a strong predictor of mathematics achievement. However, the mechanisms supporting such abstraction remain largely underspecified. We aimed to study how identification of the numerical equivalence in a Piaget-like estimation task by 6-year-old children is affected by (a) the degree of interference between number and nonnumerical magnitudes and (b) children's spontaneous orientation to numerosity. Six-year-old children first performed a card sorting task assessing their spontaneous orientation towards numerosity, spacing, or item size in a set of dots. Then, they completed a Piaget-like same/different numerical estimation task using two rows of dots in which the length ratio between the two rows varied systematically. Children were less likely to accept the numerical equivalence in the Piaget-like estimation task (a) as the difference in spacing between the dots increased and (b) as the children were more spontaneously oriented towards spacing over number in the card sorting task. Our results suggest that abstracting number depends on its saliency, which varies both as a function of the context (i.e., length ratio between the two rows) and of individual differences in children's sensitivity to the numerical aspects of their environment. These factors could be at the root of the observed development of performance in the seminal number-conservation task, which appears as a progressive abstraction of number rather than a conceptual shift, as Piaget hypothesized., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Inhibitory control (IC) plays a critical role in cognitive and socio-emotional development. Short-term IC training improves IC abilities in children and adults. Surprisingly, few studies have investigated the IC training effect during adolescence, a developmental period characterized by high neuroplasticity and the protracted development of IC abilities. We investigated behavioural and functional brain changes induced by a 5-week computerized and adaptive IC training in adolescents. We focused on the IC training effects on the local properties of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) signal fluctuations at rest (i.e., Regional Homogeneity [ReHo] and fractional Amplitude of Low Frequency Fluctuations [fALFF]). Sixty adolescents were randomly assigned to either an IC or an active control training group. In the pre- and post-training sessions, cognitive ('Cool') and emotional ('Hot') IC abilities were assessed using the Colour-Word and Emotional Stroop tasks. We found that ReHo and fALFF signals in IC areas (IFG, ACC, Striatum) were associated with IC efficiency at baseline. This association was different for Cool and Hot IC. Analyses also revealed that ReHo and fALFF signals were sensitive markers to detect and monitor changes after IC training, while behavioural data did not, suggesting that brain functional changes at rest precede behavioural changes following training., (Copyright © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Since reasoning is often biased by intuitive heuristics, the development of sound reasoning has long been postulated to depend on successful bias monitoring and inhibition. The present fMRI study aimed to identify neural correlates of developmental changes in these processes. A group of adults and young adolescents were presented with ratio-bias problems in which an intuitively cued heuristic response could be incongruent (conflict item) or congruent (no-conflict item) with the correct response. Results showed that successfully avoiding biased responding on conflict items across both age groups was associated with increased activation in Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) and the right Lateral Prefrontal Cortex (LPFC) regions of interest. Critically, the right LPFC activation decreased with age. Biased responding did not result in right LPFC or ACC modulation and failed to show any developmental activation changes. We discuss implications for ongoing debates on the nature of heuristic bias and its development., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

A major source of errors in decimal magnitude comparison tasks is the inappropriate application of whole number rules. Specifically, when comparing the magnitude of decimal numbers and the smallest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point (e.g., 0.9 vs. 0.476), using a property of whole numbers such as "the greater the number of digits, the greater its magnitude" may lead to erroneous answers. By using a negative priming paradigm, the current study aimed to determine whether the ability of seventh graders and adults to compare decimals where the smallest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point was partly rooted in the ability to inhibit the "the greater the number of digits, the greater its magnitude" misconception. We found that after participants needed to compare decimal numbers in which the smallest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point (e.g., 0.9 vs. 0.476), they were less efficient at comparing decimal numbers in which the largest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point (e.g., 0.826 vs. 0.3) than they were after comparing decimal numbers with the same number of digits after the decimal point (e.g., 0.981 vs. 0.444). The negative priming effects reported in seventh graders and adults suggest that inhibitory control is needed at all ages to avoid errors when comparing decimals where the smallest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Most researchers assume that deception involves a conflict between a predominant truth response and a deliberate deceptive response. Such a view is consistent with dual process theories that state that high-order cognition operates through fast-automatic processes that may conflict with slow-deliberate ones. In the present study, we tested whether one must inhibit the truth to deceive in light of inconsistent findings in the literature. One hundred and eighty-nine participants were tested across two Negative Priming paradigms that rest on the logic that the activation of a fast-automatic process will be hampered on a given display if it is inhibited on the previous display. Our findings suggest that truthful responses are predominant in healthy adults, which is why inhibitory control is required to activate a deliberate deceptive mode. We argue that the findings from deception studies could be best accounted for by dual process theories., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Decades of problem solving and creativity research have converged to show that the ability to generate new and useful ideas can be blocked or impeded by intuitive biases leading to mental fixations. The present study aimed at investigating the neural bases of the processes involved in overcoming fixation effects during creative idea generation. Using the AU task adapted for EEG recording, we examined whether participant's ability to provide original ideas was related to alpha power changes in both the frontal and temporo-parietal regions. Critically, for half of the presented objects, the classical use of the object was primed orally, and a picture of the classical use was presented visually to increase functional fixedness (Fixation Priming condition). For the other half, only the name of the object and a picture of the object was provided to the participants (control condition). As expected, priming the classical use of an object before the generation of creative alternative uses of the object impeded participants' performances in terms of remoteness. In the control condition, while the frontal alpha synchronization was maintained across all successive time windows in participants with high remoteness scores, the frontal alpha synchronization decreased in participants with low remoteness scores. In the Fixation Priming condition, in which functional fixedness was maximal, both participants with high and low remoteness scores maintained frontal alpha synchronization throughout the period preceding their answer. Whereas participants with high remoteness scores maintained alpha synchronization in the temporo-parietal regions throughout the creative idea generation period, participants with low remoteness scores displayed alpha desynchronization in the same regions during this period. We speculate that individuals with high remoteness scores might generate more creative ideas than individuals with low remoteness scores because they rely more on internal semantic association and selection processes., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Visual environments are composed of global shapes and local details that compete for attentional resources. In adults, the global level is processed more rapidly than the local level, and global information must be inhibited in order to process local information when the local information and global information are in conflict. Compared with adults, children present less of a bias toward global visual information and appear to be more sensitive to the density of local elements that constitute the global level. The current study aimed, for the first time, to investigate the key role of inhibition during global/local processing in children. By including two different conditions of global saliency during a negative priming procedure, the results showed that when the global level was salient (dense hierarchical figures), 7-year-old children and adults needed to inhibit the global level to process the local information. However, when the global level was less salient (sparse hierarchical figures), only children needed to inhibit the local level to process the global information. These results confirm a weaker global bias and the greater impact of saliency in children than in adults. Moreover, the results indicate that, regardless of age, inhibition of the most salient hierarchical level is systematically required to select the less salient but more relevant level. These findings have important implications for future research in this area., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Popular dual process models have characterized reasoning as an interplay between fast, intuitive (System 1) and slow, deliberate (System 2) processes, but the precise nature of the interaction between the two systems is much debated. Here we relied on the temporal resolution of electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings to decide between different models. We adopted base-rate problems in which an intuitively cued stereotypical response was either congruent or incongruent with the correct response that was cued by the base-rates. Results showed that solving problems in which the base-rates and stereotypical description cued conflicting responses resulted in an increased centro-parietal N2 and frontal P3. This early conflict sensitivity suggests that the critical base-rates can be processed fast without slow and deliberate System 2 reflection. Findings validate prior EEG work and support recent hybrid dual process models in which the fast System 1 is processing both heuristic belief-based responses (e.g., stereotypes) and elementary logico-mathematical principles (e.g., base-rates)., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Inhibitory control (IC) is a core executive function that enables humans to resist habits, temptations, or distractions. IC efficiency in childhood is a strong predictor of academic and professional success later in life. Based on analysis of the sulcal pattern, a qualitative feature of cortex anatomy determined during fetal life and stable during development, we searched for evidence that interindividual differences in IC partly trace back to prenatal processes. Using anatomical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), we analyzed the sulcal pattern of two key regions of the IC neural network, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the inferior frontal cortex (IFC), which limits the inferior frontal gyrus. We found that the sulcal pattern asymmetry of both the ACC and IFC contributes to IC (Stroop score) in children and adults: participants with asymmetrical ACC or IFC sulcal patterns had better IC efficiency than participants with symmetrical ACC or IFC sulcal patterns. Such additive effects of IFC and ACC sulcal patterns on IC efficiency suggest that distinct early neurodevelopmental mechanisms targeting different brain regions likely contribute to IC efficiency. This view shares some analogies with the "common variant-small effect" model in genetics, which states that frequent genetic polymorphisms have small effects but collectively account for a large portion of the variance. Similarly, each sulcal polymorphism has a small but additive effect: IFC and ACC sulcal patterns, respectively, explained 3% and 14% of the variance of the Stroop interference scores.

Inhibitory control (i.e., the ability to resist automatisms, temptations, distractions, or interference and to adapt to conflicting situations) is a determinant of cognitive and socio-emotional development. In light of the discrepancies of previous findings on the development of inhibitory control in affectively charged contexts, two important issues need to be addressed. We need to determine (a) whether cool inhibitory control (in affectively neutral contexts) and hot inhibitory control (in affectively charged contexts) follow the same developmental pattern and (b) the degree of specificity of these two types of inhibitory control at different ages. Thus, in the present study, we investigated the developmental patterns of cool and hot inhibitory control and the degree of specificity of these abilities in children, adolescents and adults. Typically developing children, adolescents, and adults performed two Stroop-like tasks: an affectively neutral one (Cool Stroop task) and an affectively charged one (Hot Stroop task). In the Cool Stroop task, the participants were asked to identify the ink color of the words independent of color that the words named; in the Hot Stroop task, the participants were asked to identify the emotional expression of a face independent of the emotion named by a simultaneously displayed written word. We found that cool inhibitory control abilities develop linearly with age, whereas hot inhibitory control abilities follow a quadratic developmental pattern, with adolescents displaying worse hot inhibitory control abilities than children and adults. In addition, cool and hot inhibitory control abilities were correlated in children but not in adolescents and adults. The present study suggests (a) that cool and hot inhibitory control abilities develop differently from childhood to adulthood - i.e., that cool inhibition follows a linear developmental pattern and hot inhibition follows an adolescent-specific pattern - and (b) that they become progressively more domain-specific with age., (© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The role of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in modulating the effect of bilingual experience on cognitive control has been reported at both functional and structural neural levels. Individual differences in the ACC sulcal patterns have been recently correlated with cognitive control efficiency in monolinguals. We aimed to investigate whether differences of ACC sulcation mediate the effect of bilingualism on cognitive control efficiency. We contrasted the performance of bilinguals and monolinguals during a cognitive control task (i.e., the Flanker Task) using a stratification based on the participants' ACC sulcal features. We found that performance of the two groups was differentially affected by ACC sulcation. Our findings provide the first evidence that early neurodevelopmental mechanisms may modulate the effect of different environmental backgrounds - here, bilingual vs monolingual experience - on cognitive efficiency., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

School-aged children erroneously think that 1.45 is larger 1.5 because 45 is larger than 5. Using a negative priming paradigm, we investigated whether the ability to compare the magnitude of decimal numbers in the context in which the smallest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point (1.45 vs. 1.5) is rooted in part on the ability to inhibit the "greater the number of digits the greater its magnitude" misconception derived from a property of whole numbers. In Experiment 1, we found a typical negative priming effect with 7th graders requiring more time to compare decimal numbers in which the largest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point (1.65 vs. 1.5) after comparing decimal numbers in which the smallest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point (1.45 vs. 1.5) than after comparing decimal numbers with the same number of digits after the decimal point (1.5 vs. 1.6). In Experiment 2, we found a negative priming effect when decimal numbers preceded items in which 7th graders had to compare the length of two lines. Taken together our results suggest that the ability to compare decimal numbers in which the smallest number has the greatest number of digits is rooted in part on the ability to inhibit the "greater the number of digits the greater its magnitude" misconception and in part on the ability to inhibit the length of the decimal number per se.

Children tend to confuse reversible letters such as b and d when they start learning to read. According to some authors, mirror errors are a consequence of the mirror generalization (MG) process that allows one to recognize objects independently of their left-right orientation. Although MG is advantageous for the visual recognition of objects, it is detrimental for the visual recognition of reversible letters. Previous studies comparing novice and expert readers demonstrated that MG must be inhibited to discriminate reversible single letters. In this study, we investigated whether MG must also be inhibited by novice readers to discriminate between two pseudowords containing reversible letters. Readable pseudowords, rather than words, were used to mimic early non-automatic stages of reading when reading is achieved by decoding words through grapheme-phoneme pairing and combination. We designed a negative priming paradigm in which school-aged children (10-year-olds) were asked to judge whether two pseudowords were identical on the prime and whether two animals were identical on the probe. Children required more time to determine that two animals were mirror images of each other when preceded by pseudowords containing the reversible letter b or d than when preceded by different pseudowords containing the control letter f or t (Experiment 1) or by different pseudowords that differed only by the target letter f or k (Experiment 2). These results suggest that MG must be inhibited to discriminate between pseudowords containing reversible letters, generalizing the findings regarding single letters to a context more representative of the early stages of reading., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

We investigated whether lateral mirror errors could be more prevalent than vertical mirror errors (e.g., p/q vs. p/b confusions) because mirror generalization is harder to inhibit for the discrimination of a reversible letter and its lateral than its vertical mirror-image counterpart. Expert adult readers performed a negative priming task in which they determined on the prime whether two letters and on the probe whether two objects facing opposite directions were identical. We found in both experiments longer response times for objects facing opposite lateral orientations preceded by a reversible letter and its lateral mirror-image counterpart (e.g., p/q) than preceded by perceptually matched non-reversible letters (e.g., g/j). No negative priming effect was observed when objects that were vertical (Experiment 1 & 2) or lateral (Experiment 2) mirror images of each other were preceded by a letter and its vertical mirror-image counterpart (e.g. p/b). Finally, we observed longer response times for objects that were lateral mirror images of each other after lateral than after vertical reversible letters. These results suggest that lateral mirror errors are more prevalent than vertical ones because mirror generalization might be stronger and thus more difficult to inhibit in the context of the former than the latter., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The fixation effect is known as one of the most dominant of the cognitive biases against creativity and limits individuals' creative capacities in contexts of idea generation. Numerous techniques and tools have been established to help overcome these cognitive biases in various disciplines ranging from neuroscience to design sciences. Several works in the developmental cognitive sciences have discussed the importance of inhibitory control and have argued that individuals must first inhibit the spontaneous ideas that come to their mind so that they can generate creative solutions to problems. In line with the above discussions, in the present study, we performed an experiment on one hundred undergraduates from the Faculty of Psychology at Paris Descartes University, in which we investigated a minimal executive feedback-based learning process that helps individuals inhibit intuitive paths to solutions and then gradually drive their ideation paths toward creativity. Our results provide new insights into novel forms of creative leadership for idea generation.

To determine whether the growing ability to take a third-person perspective (3PP) is explained in part by the growing ability to inhibit a first-person perspective (1PP), 10-year-old children (n = 49) and 22-year-old adults (n = 52) performed a negative priming adaptation of the own body transformation task. Both children and adults were less efficient in adopting a 1PP after they adopted a 3PP-with a smaller amplitude of the negative priming effect with older age-and adults' and children's performances in the own body transformation task were predicted in part by their Stroop interference scores. These results suggest that the growing efficiency to adopt a 3PP is rooted in part in the growing efficiency to inhibit the 1PP., (© 2016 The Authors. Child Development © 2016 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.)

To act and think, children and adults are continually required to ignore irrelevant visual information to focus on task-relevant items. As real-world visual information is organized into structures, we designed a feature visual search task containing 3-level hierarchical stimuli (i.e., local shapes that constituted intermediate shapes that formed the global figure) that was presented to 112 participants aged 5, 6, 9, and 21 years old. This task allowed us to explore (a) which level is perceptively the most salient at each age (i.e., the fastest detected level) and (b) what kind of attentional processing occurs for each level across development (i.e., efficient processing: detection time does not increase with the number of stimuli on the display; less efficient processing: detection time increases linearly with the growing number of distractors). Results showed that the global level was the most salient at 5 years of age, whereas the global and intermediate levels were both salient for 9-year-olds and adults. Interestingly, at 6 years of age, the intermediate level was the most salient level. Second, all participants showed an efficient processing of both intermediate and global levels of hierarchical stimuli, and a less efficient processing of the local level, suggesting a local disadvantage rather than a global advantage in visual search. The cognitive cost for selecting the local target was higher for 5- and 6-year-old children compared to 9-year-old children and adults. These results are discussed with regards to the development of executive control. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).)

A striking error in reading is the early and sometimes persistent confusion of mirror letters such as b and d. These mirror errors are likely a result of the mirror generalization process that allows one to identify a visual stimulus regardless of its presentation side. A previous study demonstrated that preventing mirror errors in reading requires the inhibition of the mirror generalization process in expert adult readers (Borst et al., 2015). Using the same experimental paradigm, the current study aimed at replicating this result in school-aged children. Three age groups-1st, 3rd, and 5th graders-performed a negative priming study in which they were asked to determine on the primes whether two letters were identical and on the probes whether two animals facing opposite directions were identical. All three groups of children required more time to discriminate two letters that were lateral mirror images of one another (e.g., b/d) than two letters that were not (e.g., f/t). Crucially, children required more time to determine that two animals facing opposite directions were identical when preceded by two letters that were lateral mirror images of one another (b/d) than when preceded by letters that were not mirror images of one another (f/t). Importantly, the amplitude of the negative priming effect did not vary with age. Our results suggest that overcoming mirror errors in reading, regardless of the reading proficiency of school-aged children, is rooted in the ability to inhibit the mirror generalization process., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Developmental cognitive neuroscience studies tend to show that the prefrontal brain regions (known to be involved in inhibitory control) are activated during the generation of creative ideas. In the present article, we discuss how a dual-process model of creativity-much like the ones proposed to account for decision making and reasoning-could broaden our understanding of the processes involved in creative ideas generation. When generating creative ideas, children, adolescents, and adults tend to follow "the path of least resistance" and propose solutions that are built on the most common and accessible knowledge within a specific domain, leading to fixation effect. In line with recent theory of typical cognitive development, we argue that the ability to resist the spontaneous activation of design heuristics, to privilege other types of reasoning, might be critical to generate creative ideas at all ages. In the present review, we demonstrate that inhibitory control at all ages can actually support creativity. Indeed, the ability to think of something truly new and original requires first inhibiting spontaneous solutions that come to mind quickly and unconsciously and then exploring new ideas using a generative type of reasoning., (© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

The present study investigated how multiple levels of hierarchical stimuli (i.e., global, intermediate and local) are processed during a visual search task. Healthy adults participated in a visual search task in which a target was either present or not at one of the three levels of hierarchical stimuli (global geometrical form made by intermediate forms themselves constituted by local forms). By varying the number of distractors, the results showed that targets presented at global and intermediate levels were detected efficiently (i.e., the detection times did not vary with the number of distractors) whereas local targets were processed less efficiently (i.e., the detection times increased with the number of distractors). Additional experiments confirmed that these results were not due to the size of the target elements or to the spatial proximity among the structural levels. Taken together, these results show that the most local level is always processed less efficiently, suggesting that it is disadvantaged during the competition for attentional resources compared to higher structural levels. The present study thus supports the view that the processing occurring in visual search acts dichotomously rather than continuously. Given that pure structuralist and pure space-based models of attention cannot account for the pattern of our findings, we discuss the implication for perception, attentional selection and executive control of target position on hierarchical stimuli., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Reasoners make systematic logical errors by giving heuristic responses that reflect deviations from the logical norm. Influential studies have suggested first that our reasoning is often biased because we minimize cognitive effort to surpass a cognitive conflict between heuristic response from system 1 and analytic response from system 2 thinking. Additionally, cognitive control processes might be necessary to inhibit system 1 responses to activate a system 2 response. Previous studies have shown a significant effect of executive learning (EL) on adults who have transferred knowledge acquired on the Wason selection task (WST) to another isomorphic task, the rule falsification task (RFT). The original paradigm consisted of teaching participants to inhibit a classical matching heuristic that sufficed the first problem and led to significant EL transfer on the second problem. Interestingly, the reasoning tasks differed in inhibiting-heuristic metacognitive cost. Success on the WST requires half-suppression of the matching elements. In contrast, the RFT necessitates a global rejection of the matching elements for a correct answer. Therefore, metacognitive learning difficulty most likely differs depending on whether one uses the first or second task during the learning phase. We aimed to investigate this difficulty and various matching-bias inhibition effects in a new (reversed) paradigm. In this case, the transfer effect from the RFT to the WST could be more difficult because the reasoner learns to reject all matching elements in the first task. We observed that the EL leads to a significant reduction in matching selections on the WST without increasing logical performances. Interestingly, the acquired metacognitive knowledge was too "strictly" transferred and discouraged matching rather than encouraging logic. This finding underlines the complexity of learning transfer and adds new evidence to the pedagogy of reasoning.

Cognitive development is generally conceived as incremental with knowledge of increasing complexity acquired throughout childhood and adolescence. However, several studies have now demonstrated not only that infants possess complex cognitive abilities but also that older children, adolescents, and adults tend to make systematic errors even in simple logical reasoning tasks. Therefore, one of the main issues for any theory of typical cognitive development is to provide an explanation of why at some age and in some contexts children, adolescents, and adults do not express a knowledge or cognitive principle that they already acquired when they were younger. In this review, we present convergent behavioural and neurocognitive evidence that cognitive development is more similar to a non-linear dynamic system than to a linear, stage-like system. In this theoretical framework, errors can emerge in problems similar to the ones infants or young children were succeeding when older children, adolescents, and adults rely on a misleading heuristic rather than on the correct logical algorithm to solve such problems. And the core mechanism for overcoming these errors is inhibitory control (i.e. the ability to inhibit the misleading heuristics). Therefore, typical cognitive development relies not only on the ability to acquire knowledge of incremental complexity but also to inhibit previously acquired knowledge., (© 2015 The Authors. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology © 2015 Mac Keith Press.)

Decision-makers present a systematic tendency to avoid ambiguous options for which the level of risk is unknown. This ambiguity aversion is one of the most striking decision-making biases. Given that human choices strongly depend on the options' presentation, the purpose of the present study was to examine whether ambiguity aversion influences the framing effect during decision making. We designed a new financial decision-making task involving the manipulation of both frame and uncertainty levels. Thirty-seven participants had to choose between a sure option and a gamble depicting either clear or ambiguous probabilities. The results revealed a clear preference for the sure option in the ambiguity condition regardless of frame. However, participants presented a framing effect in both the risk and ambiguity conditions. Indeed, the framing effect was bidirectional in the risk condition and unidirectional in the ambiguity condition given that it did not involve preference reversal but only a more extreme choice tendency.