Development Of Executive Attention Research Articles

Predicting Effortful Control at 3 Years of Age from Measures of Attention and Home Environment in Infancy: A Machine Learning Approach.

Effortful control (EC) is a dimension of temperament that encompass individual differences in self-regulation and the control of reactivity. Much research suggests that EC has a strong foundation on the development of executive attention, but increasing evidence also shows a significant contribution of the rearing environment to individual differences in EC. The aim of the current study was to predict the development of EC at 36 months of age from early attentional and environmental measures taken in infancy using a machine learning approach. A sample of 78 infants participated in a longitudinal study running three waves of data collection at 6, 9, and 36 months of age. Attentional tasks were administered at 6 months of age, with two additional measures (i.e., one attentional measure and another self-restraint measure) being collected at 9 months of age. Parents reported household environment variables during wave 1, and their child's EC at 36 months. A machine-learning algorithm was implemented to identify children with low EC scores at 36 months of age. An "attention only" model showed greater predictive sensitivity than the "environmental only" model. However, a model including both attentional and environmental variables was able to classify the groups (Low-EC vs. Average-to-High EC) with 100% accuracy. Sensitivity analyses indicate that socio-economic variables together with attention control processes at 6 months, and self-restraint capacity at 9 months, are the most important predictors of EC. Results suggest a foundational role of executive attention processes in the development of EC in complex interactions with household environments and provide a new tool to identify early markers of socio-emotional regulation development.

Executive Attention at Eight Years: Concurrent and Longitudinal Predictors and Individual Differences.

Executive attention, the attention necessary to reconcile conflict among simultaneous attentional demands, is vital to children's daily lives. This attention develops rapidly as the anterior cingulate cortex and prefrontal areas mature during early and middle childhood. However, the developmental course of executive attention is not uniform amongst children. Therefore, the purpose of this investigation was to examine the role of individual differences in the development of executive attention by exploring the concurrent and longitudinal contributions to its development at 8 years of age. Executive attention was predicted by concurrent measures of frontal electroencephalography, lab-based performance on a conflict task, and parent report of attention. Longitudinally, 8-year-old executive attention, was significantly predicted by a combination of 4-year old frontal activity, conflict task performance, and parent report of attention focusing, but not with an analogous equation replacing attention focusing with attention shifting. Together, data demonstrate individual differences in executive attention.

An assessment of the effects of SES on the development of executive attention in Singapore: Early English–Malay bilinguals – CORRIGENDUM RETRACTION

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An Assessment of the Effects of SES on the Development of Executive Attention in Singapore: 4 to 6-year-old English-Malay Bilinguals – CORRIGENDUM

An Assessment of the Effects of SES on the Development of Executive Attention in Singapore: 4 to 6-year-old English-Malay Bilinguals – CORRIGENDUM

An assessment of the effects of SES on the development of executive attention in Singapore: Early English–Malay bilinguals

Thirty-four English–Malay bilinguals of between four and six years of age (both balanced and dominant) characterized as low socioeconomic status (SES) on income and parental education were tested on the child-Attentional Network Task (child-ANT; Rueda, Fan, McCandliss, Halparin, Gruber, Lercari & Posner, 2004) measuring executive attention. Although SES measures fell below the Singapore median, Malay children's performance on the child-ANT remained high when compared to other age-matched monolingual and bilingual children previously tested with the child-ANT (Yang, Yang & Lust, 2011), and English–Chinese Singaporean bilinguals (Kang, 2009). None of the three SES measures – father's and mother's education, and income, significantly correlated with child-ANT components. Regression analyses confirmed that none of the SES measures significantly predicted performance on the child-ANT. Caregiver reports suggested that both balanced and dominant bilinguals displayed high executive control. We consider the possibility that cultural variations – simultaneous and pervasiveness of bilingualism in Singapore, or pervasive code-switching – may ameliorate potential negative effects of SES on executive control development.

An Assessment of the Effects of SES on the Development of Executive Attention in Singapore: 4 to 6-year-old English-Malay Bilinguals – RETRACTION

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Training, maturation, and genetic influences on the development of executive attention

A neural network underlying attentional control involves the anterior cingulate in addition to lateral prefrontal areas. An important development of this network occurs between 3 and 7 years of age. We have examined the efficiency of attentional networks across age and after 5 days of attention training (experimental group) compared with different types of no training (control groups) in 4-year-old and 6-year-old children. Strong improvement in executive attention and intelligence was found from ages 4 to 6 years. Both 4- and 6-year-olds showed more mature performance after the training than did the control groups. This finding applies to behavioral scores of the executive attention network as measured by the attention network test, event-related potentials recorded from the scalp during attention network test performance, and intelligence test scores. We also documented the role of the temperamental factor of effortful control and the DAT1 gene in individual differences in attention. Overall, our data suggest that the executive attention network appears to develop under strong genetic control, but that it is subject to educational interventions during development.

Genes and experience in the development of executive attention and effortful control

The executive attention network is involved in regulating emotions and cognitions, forming a neural basis for temperamental self-regulation. New brain imaging and molecular genetics methods can enhance our understanding of common mechanisms of self-regulation and individual differences in their expression.

Development of executive attention in preschool children

Abstract The development of self‐regulatory systems during the preschool years is accompanied by a dramatic increase in the ability to inhibit actions based on the directions of others. Several tasks have shown evidence of changes in self‐regulation during the fourth year of life. The current cross‐sectional study used a Simple Simon task, in which 33 3‐ to 4‐year‐old children were asked to respond to the command of one large toy animal but not to the command of another. Three important aspects of self‐regulation were examined: the ability to inhibit action in the face of conflict, error detection/correction and the use of verbal and physical control strategies. The ability to inhibit a response in this task increased from 22% to 90% between 36 and 48 months of age. Post error slowing of Reaction Time (RT) indicative of error detection emerged at about the same age as successful inhibition. Physical rather than verbal self‐regulation strategies were spontaneously employed by children to aid in the process of inhibition.