The development of conscious control in childhood

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Abstract

Developmental data suggest that the growth of executive function in childhood can be understood in terms of the development of consciousness. According to the ‘levels of consciousness’ (LOC) model, there are age-related increases in the highest degree of self-reflection or LOC that children are able to muster in response to situational demands. These increases in LOC with age have consequences for the quality of experience, the potential for recall, the complexity of children's explicit knowledge structures, and the possibility of the conscious control of thought, emotion, and action. The hierarchical LOCs identified by this analysis are also useful for understanding the complex structure of conscious experience in adults, and they provide a metric for measuring the level at which consciousness is operating in specific situations.

Section snippets

Example of a knowledge–action dissociation illustrating the need for different LOCs

Key aspects of this approach can be illustrated using a simple example, which I will subsequently locate in the context of a developmental theory. In the Dimensional Change Card Sort, children are shown two target cards (e.g. a blue rabbit and a red car) and asked to sort a series of bivalent test cards (e.g. red rabbits and blue cars) according to one dimension (e.g. color). Then, after sorting several cards, children are told to stop playing the first game and switch to another (e.g. shape,

The LOC model

As an information-processing model, the LOC model traces the flow of information through a functional system, illustrating the way in which primitive representations (intentional objects) are processed at various LOCs as they contribute to the complex hierarchical structure of consciousness and come to control thought and action (i.e. executive function). A central claim is that higher LOCs are brought about by a type of reflection or re-entrant processing that permits the contents of

The ascent of consciousness through subsequent levels

With each increase in LOC, the same basic processes are recapitulated, but with different consequences at each level. In general, however, as one ascends LOCs, which correspond to minC with additional degrees of reflection, one moves away from what Dewey [35] called the ‘exigencies of a situation’. Reflective processing is interposed between a stimulus and a response, and this permits the increasingly sophisticated selection and amplification of certain determinants of behavior when multiple

Conclusion

According to the LOC model, there are four age-related increases in the highest LOC that children can muster. With each increase, reflection has important consequences for the quality of subjective experience, the potential for recall, the complexity of knowledge structures, and the possibility of executive function. First, reflection adds depth to subjective experience because more details can be integrated into the experience before the contents of consciousness are replaced by new

Acknowledgements

Preparation of this article was supported by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada and the Canada Research Chairs Program.

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