Diamond A, Taylor C
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.
Dev Psychobiol. 1996 May;29(4):315-34. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1098-2302(199605)29:4<315::AID-DEV2>3.0.CO;2-T.
Luria's tapping test (tap once when E taps twice, tap twice when E taps once) was administered to 160 children (80 males, 80 females) between 3 1/2 to 7 years old. Older children were faster and more accurate than younger children, with most of the improvement occurring by the age of 6. All children tested demonstrated understanding of the instructions during the pretest, and most started out performing well, but younger subjects could not sustain this. Over the 16 trials, percentage of correct responses decreased, especially among younger subjects. Performance here was compared with performance on the day-night Stroop-like task. The most common error on both tasks was to comply with only one of the two rules. Other errors included tapping many times regardless of what the experimenter did and doing the same thing as the experimenter, rather than the opposite. It is suggested that the tapping task requires both the ability to hold two rules in mind and the ability to inhibit a strong response tendency, that these abilities improve between 3-6 years of age, and that this improvement may reflect important changes within frontal cortex during this period of life.
对160名3岁半至7岁的儿童（80名男性，80名女性）进行了卢里亚敲击测试（当实验者敲击两次时敲击一次，当实验者敲击一次时敲击两次）。年龄较大的儿童比年龄较小的儿童反应更快、更准确，大部分进步在6岁时出现。所有接受测试的儿童在预测试中都表现出对指令的理解，大多数儿童一开始表现良好，但年龄较小的受试者无法持续保持。在16次试验中，正确反应的百分比下降，尤其是年龄较小的受试者。此处的表现与昼夜类斯特鲁普任务的表现进行了比较。两项任务中最常见的错误是只遵守两条规则中的一条。其他错误包括无论实验者怎么做都敲击多次，以及与实验者做相同的动作而不是相反的动作。研究表明，敲击任务既需要记住两条规则的能力，也需要抑制强烈反应倾向的能力，这些能力在3至6岁之间有所提高，这种提高可能反映了生命这一时期额叶皮质内的重要变化。
