Development of proactive control in school-age children and its relationship with working memory

Proactive control, the ability to maintain task-relevant information in preparation for upcoming targets, has been shown to critically depend on working memory. The present study aimed to investigate the development of proactive control and its relationship with working memory in school-age children. A total of 135 Chinese school-age children were recruited. Among them, 122 children (7-year-olds: 41; 9-year-olds: 41; 11-year-olds: 40) contributed useable data for both proactive control and working memory. The results showed that proactive control efficiency on an inhibition task improved significantly from the 7-year-olds to both the 9- and 11-year-olds, while proactive control efficiency on a switching task improved significantly from both the 7- and 9-year-olds to the 11-year-olds. Besides, proactive control indices correlated significantly between the inhibition and switching tasks for the 11-year-olds but not for the 7- or 9-year-olds, suggesting that consistency in proactive control engagement across tasks may be low at early primary school years but increases at later periods. Furthermore, working memory was positively correlated with proactive control efficiency for the 7-year-olds but not for the 9- or 11-year-olds, suggesting that the relationship between proactive control and working memory may decrease with age. These results were replicated in an independent sample. Altogether, the present study advances our understanding of the development of proactive control as well as its relationship with working memory in school-age children.
Author(s): Houyu Zhou [sup.1] , Zheng Li [sup.2] , Chunjie Wang [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.410595.c, 0000 0001 2230 9154, Department of Psychology, Jing Hengyi School of Education, Hangzhou Normal [...]