Abstract
Background: In contrast to strongly established views on the development of tonic, top-down controlled alertness, a small number of neurobehavioral and neurophysiological studies deal with the developmental trajectory of exogenously driven phasic alertness during childhood. Objective: The current study aimed to examine the age and sex effects on phasic alerting during late childhood, and to analyse the degree of association between tonic and phasic alertness at the behavioural level. Methods: Three age groups of typically developing children, aged 10, 11 and 12 years (N = 59, 27 boys, 32 girls) performed a computer-based simple hand-eye reaction test of alertness that involved 28 trials with and 28 trials without a warning signal. Results: The results showed a moderate decrease of mean reaction time in both the alert and non-alert conditions with age. However, the alert effect calculated as the difference in reaction times achieved in alert and non-alert conditions was not affected by age and sex. Conclusions: In contrast to previous suggestions on possible continuing improvement in phasic alertness during late childhood, the current study suggested that the neurocognitive function of transient enhancement in attentional alertness (phasic alertness) does not change and it is stabilized in this developmental period. In addition, this function does not differ between males and females in childhood.
Highlights
The current conceptualization of attention differentiates between the alerting, orienting and executive networks which are functionally independent and responsible for the different cognitive processes related to attention (Petersen & Posner, 2012; Posner, 2012)
Check on potential confounding variables We considered the following variables that might affect the performance of the test: (i) the preferred hand used by a child to complete the test task; (ii) a current mental status: a participant was asked about it (“well or as usual” = 0, “sleepy/tired”= 1); (iii) learning ability of the child; class teachers classified participants as “very good” = 1, “average” = 2 or “below-average” = 3
The results of analysis of variance (ANOVA) on RTs in the alert condition (RTAl), ISD of RTAl, and the variable of alert effect alert trials (AS) showed no significant effect of age, sex and the age x sex interaction (Table 1)
Summary
The current conceptualization of attention differentiates between the alerting, orienting and executive networks which are functionally independent and responsible for the different cognitive processes related to attention (Petersen & Posner, 2012; Posner, 2012). Conclusions: In contrast to previous suggestions on possible continuing improvement in phasic alertness during late childhood, the current study suggested that the neurocognitive function of transient enhancement in attentional alertness (phasic alertness) does not change and it is stabilized in this developmental period. This function does not differ between males and females in childhood
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