Development of new assessment tools for attentional and executive functioning in children

In developmental neuropsychology, attentional and executive impairments are commonly reported following acquired neurological/developmental disorders such as Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), epilepsy, ADHD… Unfortunately, most of attentional tests used in child neuropsychology were originally developed for adults and are of limited interest for children (notably because of their lack of attractiveness or because they require some non-developed skills). From a cognitive perspective, it is therefore often difficult to interpret the results obtained with such tools in children.

The aim of this study was to develop assessment tasks of attentional/executive functioning which are more attractive (by using colored/familiar stimuli) and more theoretically relevant for young children. The tasks are based on Posner’s attentional model, which includes selective and sustained attention, attentional shifting and cognitive inhibition.
Eighty children aged from 5 to 11 with no developmental/neurological deficits were administered tasks assessing visual selective attention (selecting a specific character among distractors), sustained attention (crossing dinosaurs in 5 minutes), flexibility (shifting between name and colour of stimuli), and inhibition (naming the real colour of a red banana or a yellow strawberry).

Results confirmed the interest of these tasks in the assessment of attentional functioning in children, thanks to both their limited duration of administration and the stimuli’s attractiveness. Furthermore, results showed that tasks are sensitive to attentional development from 5 to 11 years old (p < .05). Finally, a preliminary study showed that some tasks can be particularly sensitive to attentional disorders in a clinical population of TBI children.