Sorting between theories of perseveration: performance in conflict tasks requires memory, attention and inhibition.

Two commentaries have raised interesting and important questions regarding our theory of attentional inertia. Happaney and Zelazo declare that children’s ability to self-reflect, and thus formulate higher-order rules, explains good performance on the card sort task. Self-reflection and rule formulation are descriptive, but do they provide an explanation, or insight into the mechanism? It is claimed that what CCC theory adds is an explanation of how inhibition and attentional refocusing occur. But then, CCC theory does not explain how reflection and higher-order rule use occur. How does one determine that a child has reflected on a rule? Is it by good performance on the task? Happaney and Zelazo say our theory of attentional inertia does not directly discount CCC theory. What evidence would? The CCC theory seems to us unfalsifiable. ‘Reflection’ needs to be better operationalized; its components and the mechanism driving it better understood. Happaney and Zelazo suggest our reaction time results with adults are compatible with CCC theory. We disagree. The demand on reflection should be constant regardless of which dimension is switched to or from. Yet we found adults were faster on the first dimension throughout the lengthy session, even when not switching. Happaney and Zelazo find our label-condition results consistent with CCC theory because (a) labeling might provide children with a more sophisticated conceptual structure, allowing them to reflect on the relevant rules, or (b) ‘[i]f labeling improved performance in some other way, this would not undermine CCC theory’. Again, CCC theory appears unfalsifiable. Children’s success in the label condition suggests their problem is in redirecting their attention to the newly relevant dimension when looking at a stimulus relevant, in incompatible ways, to both sets of rules. Important confirmation for that, and refutation of CCC theory, comes from Brooks, Hanauer, Padowska and Rosman (2003) and Perner and Lang (2002), who found that 3-year-olds succeeded on a task with an identical hierarchical rule structure to the card sort (two games, each with two embedded rules) with the stimuli presented post-switch relevant in incompatible ways to both sets of rules, but unlike card sort, shifting attention from one dimension to another was never required. Happeney and Zelazo suggest that CCC theory can account for results on the day-night task. We feel that trying to make that task fit a hierarchical, embedded rule structure is unnecessarily complicated. There is no need to posit reflection as part of the task. The day-night latency results are compatible with any theory of what the difficulty is for children, including that it is difficult to inhibit the canonical answer. Before turning to the important substantive issues raised by Munakata, Morton and Yerys, a misunderstanding about our procedure should be rectified. Munakata et al. wrote that we are arguing ‘that because the experimenter emphasizes the rule change and repeats the new rules before each trial, children’s perseveration cannot be attributed to memory problems or failure to realize the rules have changed’. That is not what we are saying. We argue that memory demands are minimized by the experimenter’s repetition of the rules; memory is demonstrated by the child’s correct pointing in response to the knowledge question. We take the latter as convincing evidence of memory. Munakata et al. request clarification of our thinking: ‘Are inhibiting, disengaging, refocusing and switching identical or separate processes?’ They are not the same. Inhibition makes possible disengaging, refocusing and switching. Inhibition is a prerequisite for the others.