Poster #4 - Bridging the gap in Attentional Task Design and Developing Age-Appropriate Measurements: A Cross-Task Examination

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Attention, Learning, Memory

Integrative Statement

The flanker task, in which participants report the direction of a central stimulus with varying distractors, has long been utilized as a validated measure attention in adults (e.g., Eriksen, 1990). This task can be “scaled down” for use with children, but its validity is less clear due to the difficulty children have complying with task instructions and completing a sufficient number of trials. We investigated performance across development on two versions of a flanker task, a classic directional and a new color version (see Figure 1). This task uses reaction time (RT) as the dependent measure, only including reasonable RTs (excluding those too fast or too slow to be task-related) on trials with correct responses. Combining RTs across trial types within tasks provided indexes of facilitation (congruent vs. neutral flankers) and interference (incongruent vs. neutral flankers).

In Experiment 1, 16 preschool-aged children completed directional and color flanker tasks; their parents also completed the Behavioral Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF; Gioia et al., 1996) as a non-laboratory measure of attentional control. The directional flanker task was completed during the initial phase of the project and proved challenging for children to complete. We developed a new color version of flanker and tested the same 16 children approximately 1 year later; again collecting BRIEF data. We chose color as an alternative as that may be easier for young children to identify quickly and reliably.

To maximize the usable data from children who committed many errors, we chose to combine correctness and RT into a Signed Response Time (SRT) score as described by Maris and van der Maas (2012). Briefly, this score assigns larger values for faster responses, but with reversed signs such that errors are negative. We then scaled scores to be between -1 and 1, with -1 corresponding to fast incorrect responses, 1 corresponding to fast correct response, and 0 corresponding to slow responses. Results showed that children performed significant better in the color flanker task (MSRT=.72 vs .24 for direction) when controlling for age. In addition, BRIEF ratings were marginally correlated with interference scores in both the directional flanker, r(16)=.382, p=.06, and the color flanker, r(16)=.438, p=.08. Facilitation scores were non-significantly correlated with BRIEF in opposite directions, direction r(16)=.225, and color r(16)= -.185. These non-significant results in opposite directions raise questions about whether the difficult nature of the directional flanker task could be masking relations among tasks, and whether these results would hold in older age groups.

We are currently conducting Experiment 2 with school-aged children (n=28, Mage=8.31; target n=50) and adults (n=14, Mage=29.71) to examine potential differences between the two versions of the flanker task within subjects for comparison with BRIEF. Experiment 2 can address whether the difference across flanker versions persist when examined in an older sample and during the same session. Results from this experiment will also be compared to Experiment 1 to examine developmental changes in the relations between tasks, with the possibility that tasks show more divergence from each other with development.

Authors

• Rebecca Ellen Leuenberger, Ripon College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Chelsea Marie Andrews, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Non-Presenting Author

• Vanessa Simmering, ACTNext by ACT, Inc.
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kristine Ann Kovack-Lesh, Ripon College
  Presenting Author