Marie Geurten

Beyond the experience: Detection of metamemorial regularities

We examined the mechanisms involved in the development of the easily learned, easily remembered (ELER) heuristic in three groups of young children (4-5 years, 6-7 years, and 8-9 years). A trial-to-acquisition procedure was used to evaluate how much these childrens judgment of learning depended on the ELER heuristic. Moreover, a new experimental paradigm, composed of six phases-a pretest, four training phases, and a posttest-was employed to implicitly influence the validity of the ELER association that underlies this metacognitive rule. Results revealed that the ELER heuristic develops early (4-5years), but its use is reduced after implicit training. Furthermore, executive monitoring was found to account for the smaller changes observed in older children (8-9 years) after training. From a developmental perspective, these findings present a coherent picture of childrens learning of metacognitive heuristics, wherein early automatic and implicit learning is later followed by effortful control.

Procedural learning, consolidation, and transfer of a new skill in Developmental Coordination Disorder.

The aim of this study was to explore the differences in procedural learning abilities between children with DCD and typically developing children by investigating the steps that lead to skill automatization (i.e., the stages of fast learning, consolidation, and slow learning). Transfer of the skill to a new situation was also assessed. We tested 34 children aged 6–12 years with and without DCD on a perceptuomotor adaptation task, a form of procedural learning that is thought to involve the cerebellum and the basal ganglia (regions whose impairment has been associated with DCD) but also other brain areas including frontal regions. The results showed similar rates of learning, consolidation, and transfer in DCD and control children. However, the DCD childrens performance remained slower than that of controls throughout the procedural task and they reached a lower asymptotic performance level; the difficulties observed at the outset did not diminish with practice.

Time’s Up! Involvement of Metamemory Knowledge, Executive Functions, and Time Monitoring in Children’s Prospective Memory Performance

This study examined time-based prospective memory (PM) in children and explored the possible involvement of metamemory knowledge and executive functions in the use of an appropriate time-monitoring strategy depending on the ongoing task’s difficulty. Specifically, a sample of 72 typically developing children aged 4, 6, and 9 years old were given an original PM paradigm composed of both an ongoing procedural activity and a PM task. Half of the participants (expert group) were trained in the ongoing activity before the prospective test. As expected, results show that time monitoring had a positive effect on children’s PM performance. Furthermore, mediation analyses reveal that strategic time monitoring was predicted by metamemory knowledge in the expert group but only by executive functions in the novice group. Overall, these findings provide interesting avenues to explain how metamemory knowledge, strategy use, and executive functions interact to improve PM performance during childhood.

Are children conservative, liberal, or metacognitive? Preliminary evidence for the involvement of the distinctiveness heuristic in decision making.

The experiment tested whether young children are able to reduce their false recognition rate after distinctive encoding by implementing a strategic metacognitive rule. The participants, 72 children aged 4, 6, and 9 years, studied two lists of unrelated items. One of these lists was visually displayed (picture condition), whereas the other was presented auditorily (word condition). After each study phase, participants completed recognition tests. Finally, they answered questions about their explicit knowledge of the distinctive encoding effect. The results revealed that even the youngest children in our sample showed a smaller proportion of intrusions in the picture condition than in the word condition. Furthermore, the results of the signal detection analyses were consistent with the hypothesis that the lower rate of false recognitions after picture encoding results from the implementation of a conservative response criterion based on metacognitive expectations (distinctiveness heuristic). Moreover, the absence of correlation between childrens explicit knowledge of the distinctiveness rule and their effective use of this metacognitive heuristic seems to indicate that its involvement in memory decisions could be mediated by implicit mechanisms.

Memorability in Context: A Heuristic Story.

We examined childrens ability to employ a metacognitive heuristic based on memorability expectations to reduce false recognitions, and explored whether these expectations depend on the context in which the items are presented. Specifically, 4-, 6-, and 9-year-old children were presented with high-, medium-, and low-memorability words, either mixed together (Experiment 1) or separated into two different lists (Experiment 2). Results revealed that only children with a higher level of executive functioning (9-year-olds) used the memorability-based heuristic when all types of items were presented within the same list. However, all children, regardless of age or executive level, implemented the metacognitive rule when high- and low-memorability words were presented in two separate lists. Moreover, the results of Experiment 2 showed that participants processed medium-memorability words more conservatively when they were presented in a low- than in a high-memorability list, suggesting that childrens memorability expectations are sensitive to list-context effects.

The effect of feedback on children’s metacognitive judgments: a heuristic account

ABSTRACT In three experiments, we investigated whether the feedback effect on the accuracy of children’s metacognitive judgments results from an improvement in monitoring processes or the use of the Anchoring-and-Adjustment heuristic. Experiment 1 revealed that adding feedback increased the accuracy of young children’s (aged 4, 6, and 8 years) memory prediction. In Experiment 2, the influence of an external anchor on children’s metacognitive judgment was established. Finally, in Experiment 3, two memory tasks that differed in terms of difficulty were administered. Participants were randomly assigned to an anchoring (high/low/no anchor) and a feedback (feedback/no feedback) condition. Results demonstrated that children in the feedback condition adjusted their predictions toward the feedback, regardless of the task’s difficulty. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that external information provided by feedback is used as an anchor for judgment. This interpretation is strengthened by the correlation found between the two scores computed to assess participants’ susceptibility to anchoring and feedback effects, which indicates that children who are more sensitive to the anchoring effect are also more sensitive to the feedback effect.

Shedding new light on representational neglect: The importance of dissociating visual and spatial components.

Over the last decade, many studies have demonstrated that visuospatial working memory (VSWM) can be divided into two subsystems, dealing respectively with spatial and visual information. A similar dissociation has been observed in brain-damaged patients without neglect for mental imagery skills. The first aim of the present study was to examine whether performance dissociations between spatial and visual mental imagery can be observed in unilateral neglect. The second objective was to further investigate the role of spatial and visual working memory subsystems in the mental representation abilities of neglect patients and healthy controls, and their dependence on the nature of the mental imagery tasks performed. The results showed that spatial and visual imagery processes can be selectively impaired in unilateral neglect. Spatial working memory skills were also found to strongly predict spatial imagery score in the two experimental groups. However, contrary to what was observed in healthy controls, visual working memory did not appear to predict performance on visual imagery tasks in neglect patients. Overall, these findings highlight the importance of investigating both visual and spatial components of working memory and mental imagery in neglect patients.

Studying self-awareness in children: validation of the Questionnaire of Executive Functioning (QEF).

Abstract Objective: People with accurate representations of their own cognitive functioning (i.e. cognitive self-awareness) tend to use appropriate strategies to regulate their behavior. Due to the lack of appropriate instruments, few studies have examined the development of this ability among children. Method: This study tested the measurement properties of the self-rating and other-rating forms of the Questionnaire of Executive Functioning (QEF), designed to tap children’s knowledge of their executive functioning. Specifically, the construct, convergent, and discriminant validities were investigated and a self-other discrepancy score was computed to assess children’s executive self-awareness. Participants were 317 children aged 7–14 years old. Results: Confirmatory factor analyses carried out on the QEF confirmed the eight-factor structure of both versions. There were significant correlations between the QEF and the parent versions of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function, the Dysexecutive Questionnaire for Children, and the Childhood Executive Functioning Inventory. Both forms of the QEF were able to distinguish between children who had sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and control participants. A statistical difference was observed between the TBI and control groups on this score, suggesting that TBI may trigger self-awareness impairments in children. Conclusion: The good psychometric properties of the two forms of the QEF were established. Furthermore, results of the analyses carried out on the different discrepancy scores seem to indicate that the QEF could help clinicians to detect patients with self-awareness deficits.

Can the exploration of left space be induced implicitly in unilateral neglect

The purpose of the present study was to explore the ability of neglect patients to detect and exploit the predictive value of a cue to respond more quickly and accurately to targets on their contralesional side in a Posner spatial cueing task. The majority of the cues (i.e. 80%) were invalid, indicating that the target would appear on the opposite side, although patients were not informed of this bias. Our results demonstrate that some neglect patients were able to extract the cues predictability and use it to orient faster toward the left. This cueing effect was present even in patients who were subsequently unable to describe the predictive character of the cues, and thus was not modulated by reportable awareness of the cue-target relation.

Stereotype contrast effect on neuropsychological assessment of contact-sport players: The moderating role of locus of control

ABSTRACT Introduction: Diagnosis threat has been shown to produce detrimental effects on neuropsychological performance in individuals with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). Focusing on contact-sport players who are at great risk of mTBI, our study was designed to examine the moderating role of internal locus of control. Specifically, we predicted that following diagnosis threat (reminder of their risk of sustaining mTBI and of its consequences), low-internal contact-sport players would underperform (assimilation to the stereotype), while their high-internal counterparts would outperform (contrast effect). We predicted that effort and anxiety would mediate these effects. Method: Contact-sport players and non-contact-sport players (“control” group) were randomly assigned to one condition (diagnosis threat or neutral) and then completed attention, executive, episodic memory, and working memory tasks. Regarding mediating and moderating variables, participants rated their effort and anxiety (self-report measures) and completed the Levenson (1974) locus of control scale. Regression-based path analyses were carried out to examine the direct and indirect effects. Results: As expected, there was no effect of condition on the control group’s performance. Contact-sport players with moderate and high levels of internal control outperformed (contrast effect) on executive and episodic memory tasks following diagnosis threat compared to the neutral condition. Additionally, the less anxiety moderate- and high-internal contact-sport participants felt, the better they performed on episodic memory and executive tasks. However, contact-sport players low in internal control did not underperform (assimilation effect) under diagnosis threat. Conclusions: Our results suggest that diagnosis threat instructions may have challenged moderate- and high-internal contact-sport participants, leading them to outperform compared to the neutral condition. Individuals who have moderate and high levels of internal locus of control may have higher performance under diagnosis threat compared to the neutral condition because of their feeling of control over their cognitive performance.