External rewards and inhibitory control in preschoolers.

This paper examines whether expectation of rewards influences preschoolers’ inhibitory control. Four- to 5- years old (N = 47) were randomly assigned to two groups: Reward-informed group (informed about receiving a toy as reward after completing target task very well) and reward-uninformed group (informed nothing). The target task was an inhibitory control task, the day-night Stroop-like task. To control individual differences, all children underwent 5 cognitive tasks (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test – Third Edition, Appearance-Reality task, Block Span task, Bear-Tiger task, and Dimensional Change Card Sort task). Results showed that the reward-informed group outperformed the reward-uninformed group in the day-night Stroop-like task though they performed similarly in all cognitive tasks. This indicates that expectation of rewards may facilitate preschoolers’ inhibitory control.Bachelor of Art