Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie (Brazil).
Span J Psychol. 2013;16:E9. doi: 10.1017/sjp.2013.12.
Executive abilities have been suggested to show differential age-related changes. This study aimed to extend this evidence to a Brazilian sample, which was composed of 572 children and adolescents aged 6 to 14 years, assessed in tests of visual and auditory working memory, selective attention, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, attentional abilities, verbal fluency and planning. ANOVAs revealed significant age effect on performance in all tests, with a trend toward better performance with the progression of age, even in differential ways. Overall, the performance on simpler tests, such as the basic attention, increased with age progression until around 11 or 12 years, when performance becomes more stable. However, in more complex tasks, including working memory tasks, the performance showed a more continuous improvement. There was gender effect in two measures: visual working memory, in which boys outperformed girls, and verbal fluency, in which the girls outperformed boys. In general, the results of this Brazilian sample were similar to those reported by studies conducted in other countries, what suggests that Brazilian socio-cultural specificities, at least of the participants of this sample, were not sufficient to reveal a distinct pattern of progression.
执行能力被认为存在与年龄相关的差异变化。本研究旨在将这一证据扩展到巴西样本，该样本由 572 名 6 至 14 岁的儿童和青少年组成，他们在视觉和听觉工作记忆、选择性注意、抑制控制、认知灵活性、注意力能力、言语流畅性和计划能力测试中接受了评估。方差分析显示，所有测试的表现都存在显著的年龄效应，表现随着年龄的增长呈上升趋势，即使在不同方面也是如此。总体而言，在基本注意力等较简单的测试中，随着年龄的增长，表现会有所提高，直到 11 或 12 岁左右，此时表现会变得更加稳定。然而，在更复杂的任务中，包括工作记忆任务，表现则呈现出更连续的提高。有两个指标存在性别效应：男孩在视觉工作记忆方面表现优于女孩，而女孩在言语流畅性方面表现优于男孩。总的来说，这个巴西样本的结果与在其他国家进行的研究报告的结果相似，这表明巴西的社会文化特点（至少是该样本参与者的特点）不足以揭示出明显的发展模式。
