Chunk #7 — Changes in Frontal EEG Coherence across Infancy Predict Cognitive Abilities at Age 3: The Mediating Role of Attentional Control — The Role of Attentional Control in the Development of Higher-Level Cognition
It is theorized that perseveration on the DCCS task is due to an inability to disengage attention from the old (pre-switch) stimulus features and refocus attention on the new (post-switch) features (Kirkham & Diamond, 2003; Kirkham et al., 2003). This view is consistent with reports that children who failed the task were able to correctly recall the post-switch rules after the game was over (Zelazo et al., 2003), but tended to describe the post-switch test cards in terms of the pre-switch features only (Towse, Redbond, Houston-Price, & Cook, 2000). These observations suggest that deficits in disengaging and redirecting attention, rather than memory, account for failure on this task. Because cognitive flexibility relies so heavily on the capacity to control attention, individual differences in attentional control may account for variability in performance on this task observed among 3-year-olds.
