Individual Differences in Inhibitory Control Skills at Three Years of Age

Abstract

Sixty-eight 3-year-old children participated in an investigation of inhibitory control (IC). Child IC was measured using various tasks in order to determine the impact on child performance of manipulating task demands. Performance on a nonverbal IC task, but not performance on more difficult motivational or traditional IC tasks, was explained by medial frontal electroencephalographic activity and by language abilities. Because of the unique relations of nonverbal IC with concurrent developmental measures, and because of its potential to predict later social problems, we conclude that it is important to include nonverbal IC measures in investigative IC batteries in early childhood.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful to the families for their participation in our research and to our research team for their assistance with data collection and coding. The assistance of Morgan Hubble, Vinaya Raj, Leslie King, Katie Rainey, and Andrew Ranicke is gratefully acknowledged. We thank Kimberly Cuevas for her comments on an earlier draft of this article.

This research was supported by grant HD049878 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) awarded to Martha Ann Bell. The content of this article is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NICHD or the National Institutes of Health.

Notes

¹These data are from one cohort of children who represent approximately 25% of the participants in a larger longitudinal study. The Less is More task was administered only to the children in this cohort as part of the first author's master's thesis research project.

²The Marker Delay and Dimensional Change Card Sort tasks were administered in a separate room after the electrophysiological portion of the lab visit. These tasks were part of our overall IC battery, but they were performed without the EEG cap so as to allow children more freedom of mobility as they approached the end of the laboratory appointment.

³ Simpson and Riggs (2005) report no differences in the performance of 3.5-year-old children between the day–night and sun–moon conditions.