A heart rate analysis of developmental change in feedback processing and rule shifting from childhood to early adulthood

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2006.03.007 Byline: Eveline A. Crone (a)(b), Riek J.M. Somsen (b), Kiki Zanolie (a), Maurits W. Van der Molen (b) Keywords: Perseveration; Inhibition; Children; Heart rate; Errors; Feedback; Performance monitoring Abstract: Over the course of development, the ability to switch between different tasks on the basis of feedback cues increases profoundly, but the role of performance monitoring remains unclear. Heart rate indexes can provide critical information about how individuals monitor feedback cues indicating that performance should be adjusted. In this study, children of three age groups (8-10, 12-14, and 16-18 years) performed a rule change task in which sorting rules needed to be detected following positive or negative feedback. The number of perseverative errors was lower for 16- to 18-year-olds than for 8- to 10-year-olds, and 12- to 14-year-olds performed at an intermediate level. Consistent with previous findings, heart rate slowed following feedback indicating a rule change, and the magnitude of slowing was similar for all age groups. Thus, 8- to 10-year-olds are already able to analyze feedback cues. In contrast, 12- to 14-year-olds and 16- to 18-year-olds, but not 8- to 10-year-olds, showed heart rate slowing following performance errors, suggesting that with age children are increasingly able to monitor their performance online. Performance monitoring may therefore be an important contributor to set-shifting ability. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Psychology, Leiden University, 2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands (b) Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Amsterdam, 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands Article History: Received 11 July 2005; Revised 17 March 2006