Rueda M Rosario, Fan Jin, McCandliss Bruce D, Halparin Jessica D, Gruber Dana B, Lercari Lisha Pappert, Posner Michael I
Sackler Institute, Weill Medical College, New York, USA.
Neuropsychologia. 2004;42(8):1029-40. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2003.12.012.
Recent research in attention has involved three networks of anatomical areas that carry out the functions of orienting, alerting and executive control (including conflict monitoring). There have been extensive cognitive and neuroimaging studies of these networks in adults. We developed an integrated Attention Network Test (ANT) to measure the efficiency of the three networks with adults. We have now adapted this test to study the development of these networks during childhood. The test is a child-friendly version of the flanker task with alerting and orienting cues. We studied the development of the attentional networks in a cross-sectional experiment with four age groups ranging from 6 through 9 (Experiment 1). In a second experiment, we compared children (age 10 years) and adult performance in both child and adults versions of the ANT. Reaction time and accuracy improved at each age interval and positive values were found for the average efficiency of each of the networks. Alertness showed evidence of change up to and beyond age 10, while conflict scores appear stable after age seven and orienting scores do not change in the age range studied. A final experiment with forty 7-year-old children suggested that children like adults showed independence between the three networks under some conditions.
近期关于注意力的研究涉及三个解剖学区域网络，它们执行定向、警觉和执行控制（包括冲突监测）功能。针对这些网络，在成年人中已经开展了广泛的认知和神经影像学研究。我们开发了一种综合注意力网络测试（ANT）来测量成年人中这三个网络的效率。现在，我们已对该测试进行调整，以研究儿童时期这些网络的发育情况。该测试是带有警觉和定向线索的侧抑制任务的儿童友好版。我们在一项涵盖6至9岁四个年龄组的横断面实验中研究了注意力网络的发育情况（实验1）。在第二项实验中，我们比较了儿童（10岁）和成年人在儿童版和成人版ANT中的表现。在每个年龄区间，反应时间和准确性都有所提高，并且每个网络的平均效率均为正值。警觉性在10岁及以后显示出变化迹象，而冲突得分在7岁以后似乎稳定，并且在所研究的年龄范围内定向得分没有变化。一项针对40名7岁儿童的最终实验表明，与成年人一样，儿童在某些条件下三个网络之间表现出独立性。
