Abstract
In complex, naturalistic tasks such as building a model, adults can strategically choose whether to refer to sources of visual information or to make the effort to store information in working memory, if re-accessing the visual world is costly (Ballard et al., 1995; Draschkow et al., 2021). 8-10-year-olds show a similar tradeoff (Kenderla & Kibbe, 2022). Others have shown that 5-7-year-olds have started to develop the skill of spontaneously monitoring the cognitive demands of tasks (Niebaum & Munakata, 2020). Here, in a preregistered study (https://osf.io/9qrc8) using a novel, naturalistic ‘Shopping Game’, we investigated this tradeoff in a yet younger group of 5-8-year-olds. Using a tablet, children picked items from a store that were on their shopping list. The store and the list were not visible simultaneously. Instead, participants could toggle between them (by pressing a central ‘switch’ icon). We manipulated the ‘cost’ of accessing the list by varying the delay (0s or 4s) before its (re-)appearance. We recorded the number of trips participants made to the list, the dwell time spent on the list during each trip, sensitivity (d’), and response bias (C). 34 children (22 girls, M=6.98 years, range: 5.09–8.97) participated. Children overall had longer dwell time (F=20.12, p<0.001), fewer trips (F=15.69, p<0.001, higher d’ (F=7.32, p<0.01), and lower C (indicative of a more liberal responding bias; F=20.12, p<0.001) in the 4s delay condition. These results indicate that young children can strategically exert effort by encoding more items in working memory when the cost of accessing an external source is high. In a follow-up study on developmental change, we will determine whether explicit knowledge of the cost is necessary for the tradeoff.