Event overview
Andrew Simpson (University of Essex) proposes that inhibitory control and conceptual understanding interact in complex ways across the course of infancy and childhood.
Wednesday 19 October 2016
Ben Pimlott Lecture Theatre, Goldsmiths, University of London
Inhibitory control is the capacity to avoid an incorrect response or irrelevant information in order to meet a current goal. In early stages of development, performance on a wide range of ‘inhibitory tasks’ is poor and it is widely held that weak inhibitory control acts as a brake on early conceptual development.
In this talk, however, Andrew Simpson will argue that inhibitory control and conceptual understanding interact, in complex ways, across the course of infancy and childhood.
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Inhibitory control is a component of executive function. It is the capacity to avoid an incorrect response or irrelevant information in order to meet a current goal. Children’s performance on a wide range of ‘inhibitory tasks’ improves dramatically between three and five years.
We propose that these tasks can be divided into two groups, and have inhibitory demands that are created in different ways. In ‘response-given’ tasks, the task’s structure contrives to automatically trigger a specific incorrect response which must then be inhibited. In ‘open’ tasks, the child’s own reasoning, based on their conceptual understanding of the task, leads initially to the to-be-inhibited response.
This means that the conceptual understanding a child brings to a task determines whether it has inhibitory demands. Conceptualize the task one way, a to-be-inhibited response is generated, and inhibition is required; conceptualize it another way, no to-be-inhibited response is generated, and no inhibition is required.
In this lecture, Andrew Simpson suggests that this insight has significant implications for current theories of cognitive development. The view that weak inhibitory control simply acts as a brake on early conceptual development is far too limited. Instead, inhibitory control and conceptual understanding interact, in complex ways, across the course of infancy and childhood.
BIOGRAPHY:
Andrew’s original undergraduate degree was in genetics from the University of Sheffield, and he obtained a PhD in molecular biology from Queens' College, Cambridge. He then worked in London for several years at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (now DEFR) as a science advisor and administrator. At the same time, Andrew studied for a BSc in Psychology at Birkbeck College, London.
Following completion of this degree, he worked as a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. While at Birmingham, Andrew started a part-time PhD in cognitive development. He later also lectured part-time at London Metropolitan University, before joining the academic staff of the University of Essex in 2008.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 19 Oct 2016 | 4:00pm - 5:15pm |
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