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When Labels Hurt but Novelty Helps: Children's Perseveration and Flexibility in a Card‐Sorting Task
Author(s) -
Yerys Benjamin E.,
Munakata Yuko
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00961.x
Subject(s) - perseveration , novelty , card sorting , psychology , cognitive psychology , cognitive flexibility , cognition , stimulus (psychology) , flexibility (engineering) , task (project management) , social psychology , neuroscience , mathematics , economics , statistics , management
Children often perseverate, repeating prior behaviors when inappropriate. This work tested the roles of verbal labels and stimulus novelty in such perseveration. Three‐year‐old children sorted cards by one rule and were then instructed to switch to a second rule. In a basic condition, cards had familiar shapes and colors and both rules were stated explicitly. In an uninformative‐label condition, cards had familiar shapes and colors, but the first rule was not stated explicitly. In a novel‐stimuli condition, both rules were stated explicitly but stimuli were novel on the first sorting dimension. More children switched to the second rule in the uninformative‐label and novel‐stimuli conditions than in the basic condition. Implications for theories of cognitive flexibility are discussed.