Development of the acquisition and control of action–effect associations Rena M. Eenshuistra * , Maaike A. Weidema, Bernhard Hommel Cognitive Psychology Unit, University of Leiden, P.O. Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands Abstract Voluntary action is anticipatory and, hence, must depend on associations between actions and their perceivable effects. We studied the acquisition of action–effect associations in 4–5-vs. 7-year-old children. Children carried out key-pressing actions that were arranged to produce particular auditory effects. In a subsequent test phase, children were to press keys in response to the previous effect sounds, with the sound–key mapping being either consistent or inconsis- tent with previous key–sound practice. As the processes underlying voluntary action controls are known to significantly improve between 4 and 7 years of age, it was expected that younger children were more prone to automatic effects of acquired sound–key associations. This hypothesis was confirmed, but reaction times and accuracy measures showed different and dis- sociable patterns. Four-year-olds but not 7-year-olds were more likely to commit an error–– i.e., to perform a sound-compatible rather than the correct action––if the sound–key mapping was inconsistent with previous practice. This effect strongly depended on previous practice, suggesting that it reflects long-term learning. In contrast, reaction time effects of mapping con- sistency did not depend on previous experience but only on the consistency between stimulus and action effect in the present task. Taken altogether, the results suggest that children acquire response–effect associations automatically and that younger children are more likely to suffer from frequent goal neglect; i.e., they tend to forget the current action goal, so that their behav- ior is dominated by automatic, stimulus-triggered response tendencies. Ó 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. PsycINFO classification: 2330; 2340; 2343; 2346; 2820 Keywords: Action control; Cognitive development; Goal neglect; Executive functions Acta Psychologica 115 (2004) 185–209 www.elsevier.com/locate/actpsy * Corresponding author. Tel.: +31-71-527-3920. E-mail address: eenshuis@fsw.leidenuniv.nl (R.M. Eenshuistra). 0001-6918/$ - see front matter Ó 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2003.12.006