Information processes of task-switching and modality-shifting across development

Developmental research on flexible attentional control in young children has often focused on the role of attention in task-switching in a unimodal context. In real life, children must master the art of switching attention not only between task demands, but also between sensory modalities. Previous study has shown that young children can be efficient at switching between unimodal tasks when the situation allows, incurring no greater task-switching costs than adults. However, young children may still experience a greater demand to shift attention between modalities than older participants. To address this, we tested 4-year-olds, 6-year-olds and adults on a novel cross-modal task-switching paradigm involving multisensory detection tasks. While we found age differences in absolute reaction time and accuracy, young children and adults both exhibited strikingly similar effects in task-switching, modality-shifting, and the interaction between them. Young children did not exhibit a greater attentional bottleneck on either the task level, or on the modality level; thus, the evidence suggests that young children engaged in similar cognitive operations in the current cross-modal tasks to adult participants. It appears that cognitive operations in multisensory task configuration are relatively mature between 4 and 6 years old.