The Shapes Task: A New Measure of Cognitive Flexibility in Infancy and Toddlerhood

Currently there is a lack of suitable tasks for measuring cognitive flexibility (CF) in children under 3 years old. Additionally, few tasks can be adapted for use across infancy and toddlerhood, which is necessary to ensure consistency in the measured construct. Here we present a new CF task, the ‘Shapes Task’ aimed at addressing this gap. During the task, children first place differently shaped blocks directly into the correct target hole(s) in a shape-sorter box. Then, in three ‘Switch trials’, the box is rotated before the child can respond. To produce the correct response, the child must now withhold responding to the previously correct location(s) and flexibly orient to the new solution. The task was administered to 156 10-month-olds and 110 16-month-olds, with 87 participants assessed longitudinally. Participants were less accurate and had slower reaction times during Switch trials, suggesting that the switches successfully increased CF load. Additionally, 16-month-olds made quicker and more accurate responses than 10-month-olds. We also found evidence of longitudinal stability in task performance between the two ages. Performance on the Shapes Task did not correlate with a well-validated response inhibition task, suggesting that individual differences in Shapes performance is not driven by inhibitory control abilities. Our data suggest that the Shapes Task is an adequate measure of CF abilities in infants and toddlers, and as such is a valuable new addition to the developmental researcher’s toolkit.Keywords: Cognitive Flexibility, Executive Functions, Longitudinal, New Task, Infancy, Toddlerhood