Livespan Development in Cognitive Flexibility: Components of Flexibility and Their Relations To Language and Working Memory

认知发展研究的最重要目标是了解它在一生中是如何变化的，并找出导致这些变化的可能来源。认知发展的一个主要维度是认知灵活性。它指的是许多能力，比如在多个任务目标中进行选择，以及在这些目标之间灵活切换。人们对认知灵活性是如何发展的知之甚少。因此，我们的目标是进一步理解认知灵活性在人的一生中如何变化，以及这些变化背后的机制。为了实现这些目标，我们将整合传统儿童发展研究和认知老龄化中使用的方法和概念。为了更好地了解认知灵活性的终身发展及其与语言和工作记忆过程的关系，该研究计划将包括三个步骤。首先，我们将依靠不同年龄段和不同实验范式的德国和法国团队的专业知识。我们将设计一种统一的方法来研究认知灵活性，这种方法可以适用于广泛的年龄范围，包括学龄前儿童和高龄人群。此外，我们还将记录认知灵活性组件(实验中的目标设置和转换)的寿命变化。1a)和转换过程的组件(实验中的激活和持久化1B)。其次，我们将考察工作记忆负荷的增加是否会影响认知灵活性及其发展。在实验2a中，记忆负荷将通过线索透明度来控制。此外，我们感兴趣的是工作记忆负荷的增加与使用语言(例如标记下一个任务目标)以增强认知灵活性之间的交互作用(Exp。2B)。最后，我们将运行两个实验来确定言语标记的内容(标记任务目标或刺激)在儿童和老年是否支持不同的认知灵活性(实验。3a和3b)。总而言之，这一系列实验将大大提高我们对认知灵活性的认识。这样的理解对于解释注意力、记忆、思维和行动等许多认知现象至关重要。

The most important goal of research on cognitive development is to understand how it changes across the lifespan and to identify possible sources causing these changes. One major dimension underlying lifespan cognitive development is cognitive flexibility. It refers to a number of abilities, such as selecting among multiple task goals as well as flexibly switching between them. Little is known about how cognitive flexibility develops. Thus, our aim is to further our understanding of how cognitive flexibility changes across the lifespan and mechanisms underlying these changes. To achieve these ends, we will integrate methods and concepts used in traditional childhood developmental research and cognitive aging. In order to better understand lifespan development of cognitive flexibility and its relation to language and working memory processes, the research program will include three steps. First, we will rely on the expertise of the German and the French team with different age groups and experimental paradigms. We will design a unified method to study cognitive flexibility that can be applied to a broad age range, including preschoolers and very old people. Moreover, we will document lifespan changes in components of cognitive flexibility (goal setting and switching in Exp. 1a) and of components of the switching process (activation and perseveration in Exp. 1b). Second, we will examine whether increased working memory load influences cognitive flexibility and its development. Memory load will be manipulated via the degree of cue transparency in Experiment 2a. In addition, we are interested in the interaction between the increase of working memory load and the use of language (e.g., labeling the next task goal) to enhance cognitive flexibility (Exp. 2b). Finally, we will run two experiments to determine whether the content of verbal labeling (labeling task goals or stimuli) supports cognitive flexibility differently in childhood and old age (Exp. 3a and 3b). All in all, these series of experiments will significantly advance our knowledge of cognitive flexibility. Such understanding is crucial to explain many cognitive phenomena such as attention, memory, thought and action.