Is Performance on the Shapes Task associated with Home Chaos?

Socioeconomic status (SES) describes a set of social and economic factors, such as education and income, which can influence many different areas of a person's life (Baker, 2014). During childhood, SES has been shown to have a small to medium effect on executive function (EF) performance, whereby those with a lower SES have poorer EF skills (Lawson et al., 2018). EF describe a set of cognitive skills which are involved in goal-directed behaviours (Diamond, 2013). One of the components of EF is cognitive flexibility (CF) which refers to the ability to mentally switch between different information or perspectives in order to produce a desired response or solve a problem (Diamond, 2013; Garon et al., 2008). One task which can assess CF in infancy is the A-not-B task (Diamond, 1985). In this task toys are repeatedly hidden in one of two locations (location A or location B). After the toy is hidden, infants must then touch (or look at) the location where they believe the toy to be. For the first few trials the toy is hidden in the same location (i.e., location A). Once the child has successfully reached to A, the toy is hidden in location B. The A-not-B task has multiple EF demands – in many versions both working memory and inhibitory control are needed (Diamond, 1985; Morgan et al., 2024). However, to successfully switch from searching the A-location to searching the B-location, infants need a basic level of CF. Infants have been found to perform differently on the A-not-B task depending on their SES background. For example, 60% of infants from a low SES background made perseverative errors (responding to the incorrect location due to prepotency being built up for that location) on the A-not-B task at 12 months, compared to just 20% of those from a high SES background (Clearfield & Niman, 2012). This suggests that growing up in a low SES environment is associated with poorer CF skills in infancy. However, SES is a complex construct encompassing many factors, and it is presently unclear which specific aspects of the child’s environment associate with early CF skills. One factor which could partially explain the relationship between SES and EF is home chaos (Micalizzi et al., 2019; Vernon-Feagans et al., 2016). Home chaos is a measure of the home environment encompassing elements such as noise, routine and crowdedness (Larsen et al., 2023; Vernon-Feagans et al., 2016). There is some evidence that there is a negative relationship between home chaos and EF whereby ‘chaotic’ households (characterised as being loud, overcrowded and lacking routine) are associated with poorer EF skills during childhood (Andrews, Atkinson, et al., 2021; Andrews, Dunn, et al., 2021). Stress has also been shown to negatively impact CF from 15 months. Seehagen et al. (2015) found that infants exposed to short-term stress (briefly interacting with a stranger and being separated from their parent) continued to produce a habitually learned action even when that action became ineffective. This suggests that short-term stress can negatively impact CF from infancy. However, less is known about the impact of long-term stress – such as growing up in a chaotic home environment - on CF in infancy. Work using a looking version of the A-not-B task with 18-month-olds provides support for a negative relationship between home chaos and EF (Nimmapirat et al., 2024). But while the A-not-B task arguably measures CF, it does not do so exclusively, as it also involves other EF and non-executive skills. The lack of suitable CF tasks for infants and toddlers has previously restricted what work can be done on this topic within this age group (Morgan et al., 2024). To address this gap, we have recently developed a new task called the Shapes Task which is able to measure CF in infants and toddlers from 10-months-old (Mimoun et al., 2025; https://osf.io/brny8_v1). The introduction of this task means that we are now able to explore how different factors such as home chaos impact early CF development. The present preregistration aims to explore the effects of home chaos on CF in infants and toddlers. We predict the following: 1. Performance on the Shapes Task will be negatively correlated with home CHAOS, as measured by the CHAOS questionnaire (Matheny et al., 1995) , at both 10 and 16 months. Whereby higher levels of home CHAOS are associated with poorer Shapes Task performance. 2. CHAOS scores at 10 months will predict performance on the Shapes Task at 16 months. The association will be negative, i.e., higher levels of home CHAOS at 10 months will be associated with poorer Shapes Task performance at 16 months. 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