Sorting between theories of perseveration: performance in conflict tasks requires memory, attention and inhibition

Two commentaries have raised interesting and important questions regarding our theory of attentional inertia. Happaney and Zelazo declare that children's ability to self-reflect, and thus formulate higher-order rules, explains good performance on the card sort task. Self-reflection and rule formulation are descriptive, but do they provide an explanation, or insight into the mechanism? It is claimed that what CCC theory adds is an explanation of how inhibition and attentional refocusing occur. But then, CCC theory does not explain how reflection and higher-order rule use occur. How does one determine that a child has reflected on a rule? Is it by good per- formance on the task? Happaney and Zelazo say our theory of attentional inertia does not directly discount CCC theory. What evidence would? The CCC theory seems to us unfalsifiable. 'Reflection' needs to be better operationalized; its components and the mechanism driving it better understood. Happaney and Zelazo suggest our reaction time results with adults are compatible with CCC theory. We disagree. The demand on reflection should be constant regardless of which dimension is switched to or from. Yet we found adults were faster on the first dimension throughout the lengthy session, even when not switching. Happaney and Zelazo find our label-condition results consistent with CCC theory because (a) labeling might provide children with a more sophisticated conceptual structure, allowing them to reflect on the relevant rules, or (b) '(i)f labeling improved performance in some other way, this would not undermine CCC theory'. Again, CCC theory appears unfalsifiable. Children's success in the label condition suggests their problem is in redirecting their attention to the newly rel- evant dimension when looking at a stimulus relevant, in incompatible ways, to both sets of rules. Important con-