Conejero Ángela, Rico-Picó Josué, Moyano Sebastián, Hoyo Ángela, Rueda M Rosario
Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain.
Mind, Brain and Behaviour Research Centre (CIMCYC), University of Granada, Granada, Spain.
Front Psychol. 2023 Mar 2;14:983361. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.983361. eCollection 2023.
Inhibitory control (IC) is the ability to prevent prepotent responses when inappropriate. Longitudinal research on IC development has mainly focused on early childhood and adolescence, while research on IC development in the first years of life is still scarce. To address this gap in the literature, we explored the association between executive attention (EA) and elementary forms of IC in infancy and toddlerhood, with individual differences in IC later at 5 years of age.
We conducted a five-wave longitudinal study in which children's EA and IC ( = 96) were tested at the age of 9 and 16 months and 2, 3, and 5 years. Children performed various age-appropriate EA and IC tasks in each wave, measuring inhibition of attention, endogenous control of attention, inhibition of the response, and conflict inhibition. At 5 years of age, IC was measured with a Go/No-go task while recording event-related potentials. After correlation analyses, structural equation model analyses were performed to predict IC at 5 years of age from EA and early IC measures.
The results revealed that EA at 9 months predicted IC measures at 2 years of age. Likewise, measures of IC at 2 years predicted performance on the Go/No-go task at behavioral and neural levels. No direct association was found between EA at 9 months and IC at 5 years of age. We further observed that some EA and IC measures were not associated across time.
As we expected, EA skills in infancy and toddlerhood were related to better performance of children on IC tasks, toghether with a more mature inhibition-related brain functioning. Altogether, the results indicate that IC in early childhood could be predicted from EA and IC at 9 months and 2 years of age and suggest that the early emergence of IC relies on the development of particular EA and basic IC skills. However, some discontinuities in the longitudinal development of IC are observed in the first 5 years of life. These findings provide further support for the hierarchical model of IC development.
抑制控制（IC）是指在不适当的时候防止优势反应的能力。关于IC发展的纵向研究主要集中在幼儿期和青少年期，而对生命最初几年IC发展的研究仍然很少。为了填补文献中的这一空白，我们探讨了执行性注意力（EA）与婴幼儿期IC基本形式之间的关联，以及5岁时IC的个体差异。
我们进行了一项五波纵向研究，在9个月、16个月、2岁、3岁和5岁时对儿童（n = 96）的EA和IC进行测试。在每一波中，儿童完成各种适合其年龄的EA和IC任务，测量注意力抑制、注意力的内源性控制、反应抑制和冲突抑制。在5岁时，通过一项Go/No-go任务测量IC，并记录事件相关电位。在进行相关分析后，进行结构方程模型分析，以从EA和早期IC测量预测5岁时的IC。
结果显示，9个月时的EA预测了2岁时的IC测量。同样，2岁时的IC测量预测了Go/No-go任务在行为和神经水平上的表现。未发现9个月时的EA与5岁时的IC之间存在直接关联。我们进一步观察到，一些EA和IC测量在不同时间点不相关。
正如我们所预期的，婴幼儿期的EA技能与儿童在IC任务上的更好表现相关，同时与更成熟的与抑制相关的大脑功能有关。总之，结果表明，幼儿期的IC可以从9个月和2岁时的EA和IC预测，这表明IC的早期出现依赖于特定EA和基本IC技能的发展。然而，在生命的前5年中观察到IC纵向发展存在一些不连续性。这些发现为IC发展的层次模型提供了进一步的支持。
