Differences in access inhibitory function in children age 9 to 11 years: construct validity of a computerized task

Abstract

According to the tripartite model of inhibition (Hasher et al., 1999; Hasher et al., 2007) the access function is the mechanism that is activated during the initial stages of processing and whose primary function is to limit or prevent the entry of irrelevant information to attentional focus. This mechanism is strongly implicated in selective attention (Bjorklund & Harnishfeger, 1990 Dempster, 1995; Harnishfeger & Bjorklund, 1993; Lane & Pearson, 1982; Lorsbach & Reimer 1997; Müller, Zelazo, Hood, Leone & Rohre, 2004), why evaluation is essential in children. For this, we designed a computerized task based paradigm and experimental Gelade & Treisman (1980) to measure the efficiency in the operation of such inhibition. The task is part of the computerized cognitive self-regulation tasks (TAC) which includes a set of tests evaluating various regulatory mechanisms. The main objective of this study is to analyze the construct validity of the experimental task, using as criteria the performance obtained by children of three age groups (9, 10 and 11). It is assumed that the scores for the different performance indicators should reflect differences in function of the age of the participants, as the inhibition efficiency increases with age. To meet this objective was evaluated (so far) a sample of 74 children aged between 9 and 11 years, of both sexes, students of a privately managed school in Mar del Plata city. In this task the child must point as fast as they can and trying not to make mistakes, the presence or absence of a blue box (white or target stimulus) presented mixed among a set of distractors (blue circles and red squares). The child must press two different keys (Z and M) depending on the presence or absence of the stimulus. Four conditions differ depending on the number of distractors (4, 8, 16 and 32), in every trial half of the distractors are blue circles and the other half are red squares. The higher the response times and the percentage of errors, the lower the efficiency of the access function (Darowski, Helder, Zacks, Hasher & Hambrick, 2008). The task consists of a block of 10 trials practice, followed by three blocks of 40 trials each. The average execution time is 3.12 minutes (SD = 0.45). The results show that with increasing age children also show an increase in the percentage of correct answers (accuracy rate performance) and decreased response times, in all conditions (4, 8, 16 and 32 distractors). It can be inferred that the task program TAC presents solid signs of construct validity as the performance increases with the age of children, confirming the hypothesis which states that the inhibition efficiency is increased as a result of development factor.Keywords: access inhibitory function; computerized tasks; children; construct validity.