Temperament and negative semantic priming in children 7 to 12 years old

Abstract

The present research assessed whether children with high and low scores on temperament traits differed in their ability to inhibit irrelevant task information in a lexical decision task. Children from 7 to 12 years old were classified based on temperament dimensions measured using a version of the Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire. The participants were instructed to either attend to (and remember) or to ignore a masked prime word followed by a central probe target on which they made a lexical decision. The results revealed several notable outcomes. First of all, recognition memory was better for attended than ignored words, providing further evidence that attention instructions influenced the processing of the primes.

Secondly, although no negative priming effect was obtained in the “ignore” condition, 43% of children showed this effect. Thirdly, children scoring high on Inhibitory Control and Impulsivity showed ignored negative priming, whereas children scoring high on Inhibitory Control and low on Impulsivity ignored facilitation. Data are discussed within the framework of negative priming as a complex phenomenon that involves the interaction of different factors such as age, type of task, and certain temperament traits.

Keywords:

• Temperament
• Childhood
• Control processes
• Negative semantic priming

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a Grant PSI2009-12684 given to the first author by the Ministry of Education and Culture (Spain). The Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire has been translated into Spanish by the Group of research on Attention, within the framework of the project Cognition and Education (CSD2008-00048), with the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture (Consolider-Ingenio Program, 2010). Finally, the authors would like to thank the children, teachers, parents, and principals of the two schools taking part in this research, Padre Méndez and Adela Díaz from Almería (Spain), for their participation and cooperation.