Inhibitory control in number-conservation and class-inclusion tasks: A neo-Piagetian inter-task priming study

Abstract : We investigated whether success in number-conservation and class-inclusion tasks relies on a general ability to inhibit mislead- ing strategies. Two groups of 10-year-olds performed inter-task priming between computerized versions of class-inclusion and number-conservation tasks (Experiment 1). In one group, the class- inclusion task served as a prime and the number-conservation task as an assessment probe and vice versa in the other group. Response times were shorter in the number-conservation task when per- formed after the class-inclusion task (and vice versa in the other group) than in control prime-probe sequences in which the primes did not require the inhibition of a misleading strategy. Experiment 2 showed that these inter-task priming effects did not simply reflect that class inclusion and number conservation rely on the reversibil- ity of concrete operations as Piaget would have hypothesized. Taken together the results are consistent with the neo-Piagetian assump- tion that cognitive development is rooted in both the acquisition of knowledge of incremental complexity and the ability to resist (inhibit) previous knowledge. Critically, the present finding sug- gests that the inhibitory ability is not domain- or strategy-specific.