Professor Munakata's research investigates the mechanisms that support cognitive processes and their development, with a focus on executive functions, the goal-directed processes that support flexible adaptation of behavior in response to changing circumstances. For much of her career, she has developed integrative theories that unify diverse behaviors and domains, implemented these theories within a neural network modeling framework and tested them against existing data, and empirically tested novel predictions from these models.
Professor Munakata's early work addressed the fact that what children know can depend heavily on how we query them. This fact led to strong debates in the field: some accounts emphasized children’s successes and discounted their failures, while others emphasized children’s failures and discounted their successes. Professor Munakata's research demonstrated how children’s successes and failures together can provide a window onto the nature of children’s knowledge representations and the way that they develop. She formulated a theoretical framework based on graded (rather than all-or-nothing) knowledge representations, and showed how such representations could develop within a simulated learning system and lead to behaviors like those observed in children. She also tested and confirmed novel predictions from this framework about the conditions under which children would succeed or fail on well-established measures. These findings shifted the field toward theories and investigations that integrate successes and failures as indices of children’s knowledge.
Munakata Y, McClelland JL, Johnson MH, Siegler RS. Rethinking infant knowledge: toward an adaptive process account of successes and failures in object permanence tasks. Psychol Rev. 1997 Oct;104(4):686-713. PubMed PMID: 9337629.
Munakata, Y. (2000). Challenges to the violation-of-expectation paradigm: Throwing the conceptual baby out with the perceptual processing bathwater? Infancy, 1(4), 471-477.
Munakata Y, Yerys BE. All together now: When dissociations between knowledge and action disappear. Psychological Science. 2001; 12(4):335-337.
Shinskey, J.L. & Munakata, Y. (2001). Detecting transparent barriers: Clear evidence against the means-end deficit account of search failures. Infancy, 2, 395-404.
Munakata Y. Graded representations in behavioral dissociations. Trends Cogn Sci. 2001 Jul 1;5(7):309-315. PubMed PMID: 11425620.
Munakata, Y., Bauer, D., Stackhouse, T., Landgraf, L., & Huddleston, J. (2002). Rich interpretation vs. deflationary accounts in cognitive development: The case of means-end skills in 7-month-old infants. Cognition, 83, B43-B53.
Shinskey, J.L. & Munakata, Y. (2003). Are infants in the dark about hidden objects? Developmental Science, 6, 273-282.
Shinskey JL, Munakata Y. Familiarity breeds searching: infants reverse their novelty preferences when reaching for hidden objects. Psychol Sci. 2005 Aug;16(8):596-600. PubMed PMID: 16102061.
Cepeda, N. J. & Munakata, Y. (2007). Why do children perseverate when they seem to know better?: Graded working memory, or directed inhibition? Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14: 1058-1065.
Blackwell, K. A., Cepeda, N. J. & Munakata, Y. (2009). When simple things are meaningful: Working memory strength predicts children’s cognitive flexibility. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 103, 241-249. PMCID: PMC2737814
Shinskey, J. L. & Munakata, Y. (2010). Something old, something new: A developmental transition from familiarity to novelty preferences with hidden objects. Developmental Science, 13, 378-384. PMCID: PMC2819673
In addition to the strength of graded representations, Professor Munakata's work has drawn attention to the importance of the form that knowledge representations take and their distinct implications for behavior: Active representations take the form of sustained neuronal firing that can be communicated to neurons in other regions, while latent representations take the form of changes in connections between neurons that can influence how information is subsequently processed by those neurons. Professor Munakata developed a theoretical framework and computational models that incorporated this distinction, with latent representations developing early and being tied to specific experiences, whereas active representations develop gradually and are more abstract and generalizable. Research from her lab showed how these distinct types of representations and competitive dynamics between them provide a way to understand seemingly distinct aspects of child development (e.g., working memory, attention, generalization, processing speed, and perseveration -- the repeating of habitual behaviors). This work has led to novel predictions about interventions to improve children’s abilities to behave flexibly, which studies in Professor Munakata's lab have tested and confirmed.
Munakata Y. Infant perseveration and implications for object permanence theories: A PDP Model of the AB task. Developmental science. 1998; 1(2):161-184.
Morton, J.B. and Munakata, Y. (2002). Active versus latent representations: A neural network model of perseveration, dissociation, and decalage in childhood. Developmental Psychobiology, 40, 255-265.
Morton, J.B. & Munakata, Y. (2002). Are you listening? Exploring a knowledge action dissociation in a speech interpretation task. Developmental Science, 5, 435-440.
Stedron JM, Sahni SD, Munakata Y. Common mechanisms for working memory and attention: the case of perseveration with visible solutions. J Cogn Neurosci. 2005 Apr;17(4):623-31. PubMed PMID: 15829082.
Brace JJ, Morton JB, Munakata Y. When actions speak louder than words: improving children's flexibility in a card-sorting task. Psychol Sci. 2006 Aug;17(8):665-9. PubMed PMID: 16913947.
Yerys BE, Munakata Y. When labels hurt but novelty helps: children's perseveration and flexibility in a card-sorting task. Child Dev. 2006 Nov-Dec;77(6):1589-607. PubMed PMID: 17107448.
Kharitonova, M., Chien, S., Colunga, E. & Munakata, Y. (2009). More than a matter of getting "unstuck": Flexible thinkers use more abstract representations than perseverators. Developmental Science, 12, 662-669. PMCID: PMC2735095
Kharitonova, M. & Munakata, Y. (2011). The role of representations in executive function: Investigating a developmental link between flexibility and abstraction. Front. Psychology, 2: 347. PMCID: PMC3227021
Chatham, C. H., Yerys, B. E., and Munakata, Y. (2012). Why won’t you do what I want? The informative failures of children and models. Cognitive Development, 27(4): 349-366. NIHMS352034
Cepeda, N. J., Blackwell, K. A., & Munakata, Y. (2013). Speed isn’t everything: Complex processing speed measures mask individual differences and developmental changes in executive control. Developmental Science, 2: 269-286. PMCID: PMC3582037
Active representations can be distinguished further based on when they are engaged: proactively (in anticipation of being needed) or reactively (as needed in the moment). Professor Munakata has investigated how such representations are engaged in the service of executive functioning. Studies in her lab have demonstrated that children transition from engaging active representations reactively during the first years of life, to becoming increasingly proactive across development. Much prior work and theorizing had instead focused exclusively on proactive processes, even in infants. Work from her lab has also demonstrated the importance of proactive processes in the ability to exert inhibitory control over actions. Professor Munakata has integrated these findings to formulate a new theory about the nature of children’s difficulties with inhibitory control, and she has tested and confirmed counterintuitive predictions from this theory about ways to improve children’s inhibitory control. These findings also advance the field by highlighting a relatively underexplored aspect of children’s development: the adaptive coordination of different forms of control to best meet their goals. Her lab has found that young children can be capable of engaging proactive control but may not have the metacognitive processes to support doing so.
Chatham CH, Frank MJ, Munakata Y. Pupillometric and behavioral markers of a developmental shift in the temporal dynamics of cognitive control. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009 Apr 7;106(14):5529-33. PubMed PMID: 19321427; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2666994.
Chatham CH, Claus ED, Kim A, Curran T, Banich MT, Munakata Y. Cognitive control reflects context monitoring, not motoric stopping, in response inhibition. PLoS One. 2012;7(2):e31546. PubMed PMID: 22384038; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3288048.
Chevalier N, Chatham CH, Munakata Y. The practice of going helps children to stop: the importance of context monitoring in inhibitory control. J Exp Psychol Gen. 2014 Jun;143(3):959-65. PubMed PMID: 24512561; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4057641.
Blackwell, K. A., & Munakata, Y. (2014). Costs and benefits linked to developments in cognitive control. Developmental Science, 17(2), 203–211. doi:10.1111/desc.12113
Blackwell, K. A., Chatham, C. H., Wiseheart, M., & Munakata, Y. (2014). A developmental window into trade-offs in executive function: The case of task switching versus response inhibition in 6-year-olds. Neuropsychologia. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.04.016
Chevalier N, Martis SB, Curran T, Munakata Y. Metacognitive processes in executive control development: the case of reactive and proactive control. J Cogn Neurosci. 2015 Jun;27(6):1125-36. PubMed PMID: 25603026.
Barker, J. E. & Munakata, Y. (2015). Time isn’t of the essence: Activating goals rather than imposing delays improves inhibitory control in children. Psychological Science, 26: 1898-1908.
Doebel, S., Barker, J. E., Chevalier, N., Michaelson, L., Fisher, A. V. & Munakata, Y. (2017). Getting ready to use control: Advances in the measurement of young children’s use of proactive control. PLOS One, 10.
Doebel, S. Dickerson, J. Hoover, J., & Munakata, Y. (2018). Using language to get ready: Familiar labels help children engage proactive control. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 166: 147-159.
Executive functioning and its development are often studied in experimental contexts where goals are clearly specified for participants. How do people decide for themselves what goal-directed actions to carry out and when, and what modes of executive functioning to engage and when, and how does such self-directed executive functioning develop? Professor Munakata's research has demonstrated that competitive inhibitory dynamics, among abstract goal representations, play a critical role in such selection processes. Her lab has shown how such dynamics within a computational model lead to behaviors like those observed across development (e.g., with increases in the number of activated competitors leading to worse performance in making selections). Her lab has tested novel predictions from this model about the patterns of neural activity supporting selection processes, and about effects on selection processes of development, of a neuropharmacological agent, of individual differences in neurotransmitter concentrations, and of anxiety and depression. This work provides a novel, unified way to understand a diverse set of findings about people’s choices, and highlights the importance of selection processes and their relative absence from studies on other aspects of executive function.
Snyder, H. R. & Munakata, Y. (2008). So many options, so little time: The roles of association and competition in underdetermined responding. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15: 1083-1088. PMCID: PMC2587096
Snyder HR, Hutchison N, Nyhus E, Curran T, Banich MT, O'Reilly RC, Munakata Y. Neural inhibition enables selection during language processing. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010 Sep 21;107(38):16483-8. PubMed PMID: 20813959; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2944747.
Snyder HR, Munakata Y. Becoming self-directed: abstract representations support endogenous flexibility in children. Cognition. 2010 Aug;116(2):155-67. PubMed PMID: 20472227; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2900525.
Snyder, H. R., Banich, M. T., & Munakata, Y. (2011). Choosing our words: Retrieval and selection processes recruit shared neural substrates in left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23, 3470-3482. PMCID: PMC3168706
Snyder, H. R., & Munakata, Y. (2013). So many options, so little control: Abstract representations can reduce selection demands to increase children's self-directed flexibility. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 116: 659-673. NIHMS510957
Snyder HR, Kaiser RH, Whisman MA, Turner AE, Guild RM, Munakata Y. Opposite effects of anxiety and depressive symptoms on executive function: the case of selecting among competing options. Cogn Emot. 2014;28(5):893-902. PubMed PMID: 24295077; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4020950.
de la Vega A, Brown MS, Snyder HR, Singel D, Munakata Y, Banich MT. Individual differences in the balance of GABA to glutamate in pFC predict the ability to select among competing options. J Cogn Neurosci. 2014 Nov;26(11):2490-502. PubMed PMID: 24742191; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4182145.
Snyder HR, Banich MT, Munakata Y. All competition is not alike: neural mechanisms for resolving underdetermined and prepotent competition. J Cogn Neurosci. 2014 Nov;26(11):2608-23. PubMed PMID: 24742155; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4182108.
Barker, J. E. & Munakata, Y. (2015). Developing self-directed executive functioning: Recent findings and future directions. Mind, Brain, and Education, 9(2), 92-99.
Niebaum, J.C., Chevalier, N., Guild, R. M. & Munakata, Y. (2018). Adaptive control and the avoidance of cognitive control demands across development. Neuropsychologia. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2018.04.029. [Epub ahead of print]
Many of Professor Munakata's recent contributions focus on publishing integrative theoretical papers, and testing a broad range of factors that may need to be incorporated to advance theorizing and intervention in executive function and its development. For example, executive functioning in the moment and in the longer term may be shaped by underemphasized environmental factors. Work from her lab has demonstrated a relationship between how children spend their leisure time and their self-directed executive functioning, and the importance of social norms and trust in other individuals in delaying gratification. Her work has also revealed an extended sensitive period to environmental input in the development of high IQ. This work points toward promising new directions for targeting interventions to support executive functioning in the moment, and to improve it in the longer term.
Munakata Y, Herd SA, Chatham CH, Depue BE, Banich MT, O'Reilly RC. A unified framework for inhibitory control. Trends Cogn Sci. 2011 Oct;15(10):453-9. PubMed PMID: 21889391; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3189388.
Munakata Y, Snyder HR, Chatham CH. Developing Cognitive Control: Three Key Transitions. Curr Dir Psychol Sci. 2012 Apr;21(2):71-77. PubMed PMID: 22711982; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3375849.
Brant AM, Munakata Y, Boomsma DI, Defries JC, Haworth CM, Keller MC, Martin NG, McGue M, Petrill SA, Plomin R, Wadsworth SJ, Wright MJ, Hewitt JK. The nature and nurture of high IQ: an extended sensitive period for intellectual development. Psychol Sci. 2013 Aug;24(8):1487-95. PubMed PMID: 23818653.
Michaelson L, de la Vega A, Chatham CH, Munakata Y. Delaying gratification depends on social trust. Front Psychol. 2013;4:355. PubMed PMID: 23801977; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3685794.
Barker JE, Semenov AD, Michaelson L, Provan LS, Snyder HR, Munakata Y. Less-structured time in children's daily lives predicts self-directed executive functioning. Front Psychol. 2014;5:593. PubMed PMID: 25071617; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4060299.
Michaelson, L. E. & Munakata, Y. (2016). Trust matters: Seeing how an adult treats another person influences preschoolers’ willingness to delay gratification. Developmental Science, 19, 1011-1019.
Doebel, S. & Munakata, Y. (2018). Group influences on engaging self-control: Children delay gratification and value it more when their in-group delays and their out-group doesn’t. Psychological Science, 29(5): 738-748.