Sophie Jacques

Categorical flexibility in preschoolers: contributions of conceptual knowledge and executive control

The current study evaluated the relative roles of conceptual knowledge and executive control on the development of categorical flexibility, the ability to switch between simultaneously available but conflicting categorical representations of an object. Experiment 1 assessed conceptual knowledge and executive control together; Experiment 2 differentiated conceptual knowledge from costly executive processes. In Experiment 1, 3- to 5-year-olds were given a three-choice (taxonomic, thematic, and nonassociate) match-to-sample task and asked to match two associates. In Experiment 2, same-aged children were assessed on another match-to-sample task that reduced executive costs by presenting thematic and taxonomic associates on separate trials. By comparing performance across tasks, age-related changes resulting from conceptual knowledge and executive control indicated that conceptual knowledge of superordinate relations showed gains between 3 and 4 years, whereas gains in executive control were seen between 4 and 5 years, suggesting a décalage in the development of conceptual and executive processes underlying categorical flexibility.

Cognitive Flexibility Among Individuals With Down Syndrome: Assessing the Influence of Verbal and Nonverbal Abilities

The influences of verbal mental age (VMA) and performance mental age (PMA) on cognitive flexibility were examined among a group of participants with Down syndrome (DS), in order to disentangle the relative contributions of each. The impaired cognitive flexibility typically observed among individuals with DS in combination with uneven VMA and PMA development suggests an opportunity to further understand the developmental relationship between VMA, PMA, and cognitive flexibility. We examined the performance of 22 participants with DS on the Flexible Item Selection Task (FIST), used for measuring cognitive flexibility among preschoolers. Partial correlations revealed that only VMA was related to the FIST after controlling for PMA, highlighting the role of verbal abilities in the development of cognitive flexibility.

Subtypes of aggression in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: medication effects and comparison with typical children.

We examined aggressive behavior in 6- to 12-year-old children, including 20 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) on stimulant medication, 19 children with ADHD on placebo (n = 19), and 32 controls. Children completed a laboratory provocation task designed to measure hostile, instrumental, reactive, and proactive aggression. Children in the ADHD-placebo group exhibited increased proactive and reactive aggression following high levels of provocation compared to controls. On the last trials, instrumental aggression dissipated for controls and hostile aggression dissipated for children in the ADHD-placebo group. Both instrumental and hostile aggression dissipated for children in the ADHD-medication group.

Selective Attention to Emotional Pictures as a Function of Gambling Motives in Problem and Nonproblem Gamblers

Problem gambling may reflect a maladaptive means of fulfilling specific affect-regulation motives, such as enhancing positive affect or coping with negative affect. Research with clinical populations indicates that disorders with prominent affective symptoms are characterized by attentional biases for symptom-congruent information. Thus, we assessed whether problem gamblers with enhancement motives for gambling would demonstrate attentional biases for positive emotional information, relative to other types of emotional information, and problem gamblers with coping motives for gambling would demonstrate attentional biases for negative emotional information, compared with other types of emotional information. In addition, we expected motive-congruent biases to be stronger in problem gamblers than nonproblem gamblers. To test these hypotheses, problem and nonproblem gamblers received an emotional orienting task in which neutral, negative, and positive pictorial cues appeared to one side of the computer screen, followed by target words in cued or uncued locations. In a look-away condition, participants had to shift attention away from pictures to respond to predominantly uncued targets, whereas in a look-toward condition, they had to orient to pictures to categorize predominantly cued targets. The results revealed motive-congruent orienting biases and disengagement lags for emotional pictures in problem gamblers. The link between motives and affective biases was less apparent in nonproblem gamblers. Results suggest that attentional measures may provide a useful complement to the subjective methodologies that are typically employed in studying problem gamblers.

Modelling vocabulary development among multilingual children prior to and following the transition to school entry

ABSTRACT Differences between monolingual and multilingual vocabulary development have been observed but few studies provide a longitudinal perspective on vocabulary development before and following school entry. This study compares vocabulary growth profiles of 106 multilingual children to 211 monolingual peers before and after school entry to examine whether: (1) school entry coincides with different rates of vocabulary growth compared to prior to school entry, (2) compared to monolingual peers, multilingual children show different vocabulary sizes or rates of vocabulary growth, (3) the age of onset of second-language acquisition for multilingual children is associated with vocabulary size or rate of vocabulary growth, and (4) the sociolinguistic context of the languages spoken by multilingual children is associated with vocabulary size or rate of vocabulary growth. Results showed increases in vocabulary size across time for all children, with a steeper increase prior to school entry. A significant difference between monolingual and multilingual children who speak a minority language was observed with regards to vocabulary size at school entry and vocabulary growth prior to school entry, but growth rate differences were no longer present following school entry. Taken together, results suggest that which languages children speak may matter more than being multilingual per se.