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Attentional set-shifting in children: Effects of individual differences in anxiety and attentional control
... Our results are also in line with studies reporting that preschool girls presented higher levels of effortful control (e.g., Olson et al., 2005; Raaijmakers et al., 2008). Also, the fact that our task involved operating with emotional material (categorizing a stimulus based on emotion) might have favored the performance of preschool girls, as this has been previously indicated by their better performance at decoding emotion from facial expressions (Boyatzis et al., 1993) and their faster emotional judgments after neutral ones in a shifting context (Mocan et al., 2014). Non-verbal intelligence scores were linked to superior WM spans, but did not have an impact on other EF performances. ...
It has been conjectured that basic individual differences in attentional control influence higher-level executive functioning and subsequent academic performance in children. The current study sets out to complement the limited body of research on early precursors of executive functions (EFs). It provides both a cross-sectional, as well as a longitudinal exploration of the relationship between EF and more basic attentional control mechanisms, assessed via children's performance on memory storage tasks, and influenced by individual differences in anxiety. Multiple measures of verbal and visuospatial short-term memory (STM) were administered to children between 3 and 6 years old, alongside a non-verbal measure of intelligence, and a parental report of anxiety symptoms. After 9 months, children were re-tested on the same STM measures, at which time we also administered multiple measures of executive functioning: verbal and visuospatial working memory (WM), inhibition, and shifting. A cross-sectional view of STM development indicated that between 3 and 6 years the trajectory of visuospatial STM and EF underwent a gradual linear improvement. However, between 5 and 6 years progress in verbal STM performance stagnated. Hierarchical regression models revealed that trait anxiety was negatively associated with WM and shifting, while non-verbal intelligence was positively related to WM span. When age, gender, non-verbal intelligence, and anxiety were controlled for, STM (measured at the first assessment) was a very good predictor of overall executive performance. The models were most successful in predicting WM, followed by shifting, yet poorly predicted inhibition measures. Further longitudinal research is needed to directly address the contribution of attentional control mechanisms to emerging executive functioning and to the development of problematic behavior during early development.
Prospective memory (PM) refers to remembering to perform a previously planned action at the appropriate time or in the appropriate context. The present study investigated the effects of individual differences in age and trait anxiety on PM performance in 3–5- and 5–7-year-olds. Two types of PM measures were used: an event-based task, requiring ongoing activity interruption across two conditions (with/without memory aid), and an activity-based task, requiring PM action implementation after the main activity was finalized. On the event-based PM task, we found that: all children benefited from the external memory aid; the 5–7-year-old group outperformed the 3–5-year-olds; and higher levels of anxiety negatively affected only the younger age group. On the activity-based PM task, we found no significant age-group differences, while higher anxiety negatively predicted children’s PM performance. Findings support and extend the literature on early PM development, revealing the benefits of external cueing and the potential detrimental effects of anxiety.
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