Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Previous research by Kaniel & Lubow in 1986 found that youngchildren (aged 4-5 years) exhibited poorer learning (latentinhibition) to pre-exposed stimuli than older children (aged 7-10years). The aim of our research was to develop a computer-based,child-friendly study that would replicate the work of Kaniel &Lubow. Sixty-three children took part in our experiment. Thisconsisted of a pre-exposure/study phase in which participants wereasked to press computer keys in response to clipart pictures ofanimals and dinosaurs. Each animal or dinosaur picture waspreceded by one of two “warning signals” which acted as the pre-exposed stimuli (to which no response was required). In the testphase that followed, the participants had to either press thespacebar or withhold their response to each pre-exposed stimulusand two novel stimuli. They learnt which response was correct bytrial and error using the feedback provided. The accuracy andreaction time of the responses during the test phase were analysedand indicated that the youngest children showed significantlylower mean accuracy and longer mean response times to the pre-exposed stimuli than to stimuli they had not been pre-exposed to.In contrast, the older children showed no significant differences intheir responses to pre-exposed and novel stimuli. These results areconsistent with those found by Kaniel & Lubow and could be takenas evidence for latent inhibition in young children. Further studiesare proposed in which variations in pre-exposure procedure areused to rule out explanations based on response inhibition ornegative priming.