Development of between-trial response strategy adjustments in a continuous action control task: A cross-sectional study

- We tested two sequential-effect accounts in a continuous action-control task.
- No-change performance was impaired after a change trial, whereas change performance improved.
- Similar latency improvements were observed for all age groups.
- Our study shows that response strategies are adjusted on a trial-by-trial basis.

Response strategies are constantly adjusted in ever-changing environments. According to many researchers, this involves executive control. This study examined how children (aged 4-11 years) and young adults (aged 18-21 years) adjusted response strategies in a continuous action control task. Participants needed to move a stimulus to a target location, but on a minority of the trials (change trials) the target location changed. When this happened, participants needed to change their movement. We examined how performance was influenced by the properties of the previous trial. We found that no-change performance was impaired, but change performance was improved, when a change signal was presented on the previous trial. Extra analyses revealed that the between-trial effects on no-change trials were not influenced by the repetition of the previous stimulus. Combined, these findings provide support for the idea that response strategies were adjusted on a trial-by-trial basis. Importantly, we observed large age-related differences in overall change and no-change latencies but observed no differences in response strategy adjustments. This is consistent with findings obtained with other paradigms and suggests that adjustment mechanisms mature at a faster rate than other “executive” action control mechanisms.