TEMPORAL DIFFERENTIATION OF RESPONSE DURATION IN 4 1/2-YEAR OLDS AND 6-YEAR-OLDS - ROLE OF VERBAL INSTRUCTIONS VERSUS DEMONSTRATION

Four-and-a-half and six-year-olds were trained on a schedule requiring differentiation of a button-press duration with a target response duration of 5 plus or minus 1 second. Subjects were divided into two subgroups per age. Before the first trial, subjects in the verbal instruction subgroups were told to "press the button for a certain amount of time". The demonstration subgroups watched the experimenter press the button for the correct duration. Each discrete trial was followed hy feedback ("good" or "bad") and a verbal probe about the task requirement. The number of correct responses tended to increase as a function of age. Instruction type significantly affected the number of correct responses (verbal < demonstration) at the first training block. Time-related verbalizations were obtained in 4 1/2- and 6-year-olds instructed verbally and by demonstration. The number of verbalizations increased with age regardless of type of instruction. Significant correlations between the number of time-related verbalizations and the number of response durations close to target were found in verbally instructed 4 1/2- and 6-year-olds, but only in 6-year-olds instructed by demonstration. The verbalization-performance correlation was only observed in older (11-year-old) subjects in a previous study employing minimal instructions ("press the button") on a similar task.