The interaction between impulsivity, inhibitory control and scale errors in toddlers

摘要

An exploratory analysis was performed in a sample of 2- and 2.5-year-old children to investigate the effect of delay manipulation on the scale errors production. Results showed that delay manipulation does not reduce scale errors across a full sample of toddlers, but is effective in reducing errors in the younger subgroup of 2-year-olds. In this adaptation of the miniature replica objects task, the presence of a delay between the vision of the replica objects and their manipulation by the child dramatically decreases both the scale errors frequency and the scale errors duration in 2-year-olds. These findings suggest that immature inhibitory control is at least part of the reason why 2-year-olds do scale errors. The absence of a delay effect at the age of 2.5 years indicates that in older toddlers additional factors might play a role in scale errors production. Taken together, these findings suggest that scale errors correspond to a dynamic phenomenon, influenced by multiple parameters at different time scales.