Prepotency in action: Does children’s knowledge of an artifact affect their ability to inhibit acting on it?

•Presents a new task to investigate the prepotency of actions made on artifacts.•Investigates proposal that only actions associate with an artifact can become prepotent.•Data suggest an action, made on an artifact, can be prepotent without being associated with it.•Data suggest artifact–action associations affect prepotency in a more subtle way.•Conclude prepotency can depend on the interaction of both long- and short-term processes.

Prepotent actions are actions that are strongly triggered by the environment and so tend to be carried out unless intentionally avoided. Understanding what makes an action prepotent is central to an understanding of inhibitory control. The current study investigated actions made on artifacts because in artifact-dense cultures much everyday behavior is focused on them. A total of 80 3-year-olds were tested on a Go/No-go task that required children to make an action on go trials and to withhold it on no-go trials. These actions were made on artifacts with which the actions were either associated (e.g., drawing with a crayon) or unassociated (e.g., drawing with a hammer). Failure to avoid the go action on no-go trials was taken as evidence that the action was prepotent. Results suggested that an action did not need to be associated with an artifact in order for it to be prepotent (so drawing with a hammer could be prepotent). However, associated actions were sometimes produced even when children had been instructed to make an unassociated action. Children sometimes drew with a crayon when told to hammer with it, but they never hammered when told to draw.