Object-Set-Shifting: Development, Developmental Disorders, and Localization

Set-shifting is an important aspect of human cognition: The ability to shift cognitive sets is necessary for flexibility in thought and action, for example, for being able to switch between different tasks or between different ways of thinking about objects. There is evidence that the central developmental factor of set-shifting pertains to the identification of objects. The goal of this project is to examine whether this factor is of fundamental importance beyond developmental courses. Two different strands of research support the idea that object-set-shifting, especially, is an important aspect of human cognition. Firstly, the ability to think about one and the same thing in different ways under different perspectives (for example, think about a "blue apple" as "an apple" and as a "blue thing") is much discussed in the cognitive developmental psychology literature: The acquisition of this ability at around 4 years of age is seen as an important developmental milestone for children. Secondly, a growing body of experimental evidence suggests that visual attention cannot only be space-based, as traditionally assumed, but it can also be object-based. Currently, set-shifting in general is a hot research topic in cognitive developmental psychology, psychopathology, and cognitive neuroscience. This project aims to investigate a special kind of set-shifting, namely object-set- shifting, bringing together these three different research areas. The research questions are: (a) How does object-set- shifting develop in normally developing children?, (b) Do children with autism exhibit a specific deficit in object- set-shifting?, (c) What are the neural correlates of object-set-shifting in adults?