Development of Inhibitory Processes During the First Years of Primary Schooling

Abstract

Inhibition is regarded a key executive function. An influential current theoretical approach supports the existence of different inhibitory processes—perceptual, cognitive, and responseinhibition. Although it has been suggested that inhibitory processes have specific developmenttrajectories, studies that simultaneously analyze these processes through the identificationof particular trajectories are still scarce and there are no studies during the first years ofschool-age. This is an important issue since at this stage inhibitory processes are expected tobe differentiated, experiencing improvements in their functioning and intervening in theperformance of various complex activities. Objective: This work aimed to analyze thedevelopment of perceptual, cognitive, and response inhibition in children who are in the firstyears of primary school. Methods: In Study 1 (cross-sectional), 173 children of 6–8 years ofage were evaluated with perceptual, cognitive, and response inhibition tasks. In Study 2(longitudinal), 58 childrenwere reevaluated with the same tasks in twomore times: 6 monthsand 1 year after the first evaluation. Different types of ANOVAswere implemented. Results:Study 1 revealed differences in performance between age groups in perceptual inhibition.Significant differences between 6 years old children with respect to 7 and 8 years old, wereobserved. Study 2 showed that children improved their performance in perceptual inhibitionafter 1 year. Improvements in cognitive inhibition were found after 1 year for children aged6 years old. Conclusions: These results contribute to the understanding of the developmentof inhibition, and provide evidence favoring the nonunitary approach of inhibition.