Abstract The present research aimed at determining (a) whether participants modulate executive control processes from one item to the next when they accomplish numerosity comparison tasks, and (b) how these modulations change across the lifespan. We tested sequential modulations of congruency effects in participants of different age groups. Sequential modulations of congruency effects refer to decreased congruency effects (i.e., poorer performance on incongruent items relative to congruent items) following incongruent items compared to after congruent items. Children (8-year-olds, 10-year-olds, and 13-year-olds), younger (18–30-year-olds) and older adults (65–94-year-olds) accomplished a dot comparison task. They were presented two collections of dots and had to decide which collection included the largest number of dots. Results showed that congruency effects were smaller on current items following incongruent items (i.e., visual feature mismatched numerosity) than after congruent items (i.e., visual feature matched numerosity) in 13-year-old-children, as well as in young and older adults. In 8-year-old-children, reverse sequential modulations of congruency effects were observed (i.e., congruency effects on current items increased following incongruent items), while congruency effects on current items were not different after congruent and incongruent items in 10-year-old-children. Finally, age-related differences in sequential modulations of congruency effects depend on efficiency of participants’ executive control processes. These findings have important implications to further our understanding on how domain-general mechanisms contribute to numerosity comparison performance, and how such contribution changes across the lifespan.

中文翻译：

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数量比较中整个生命周期中执行控制过程的顺序调制

摘要 本研究旨在确定 (a) 参与者在完成数量比较任务时是否会调节从一个项目到下一个项目的执行控制过程，以及 (b) 这些调节在整个生命周期中如何变化。我们在不同年龄组的参与者中测试了一致性效应的连续调制。一致性效应的顺序调制是指在不一致项之后与在一致项之后相比降低一致效应（即，相对于一致项而言，不一致项的表现更差）。儿童（8 岁、10 岁和 13 岁）、年轻人（18-30 岁）和老年人（65-94 岁）完成了点比较任务。他们被展示了两个点集合，并且必须决定哪个集合包含最多的点。结果表明，在 13 岁儿童以及年轻人和老年人中，不一致项目（即视觉特征不匹配数量）对当前项目的一致性影响小于一致项目（即视觉特征匹配数量）后的一致性影响. 在 8 岁儿童中，观察到一致性效应的反向顺序调制（即，在不一致项目之后对当前项目的一致性影响增加），而在 10 年的一致和不一致项目之后对当前项目的一致性影响没有差异 -老人孩子。最后，一致性效应的顺序调制中与年龄相关的差异取决于参与者执行控制过程的效率。