Cognitive-affective flexibility represents the ability to switch between alternative ways of processing emotional stimuli according to situational demands and individual goals. Although reduced flexibility has been implicated as a mechanism for the development of anxiety, there is very limited data on this relationship in children and adolescents. The aim of the current study was to investigate cognitive-affective flexibility in preadolescents (N = 112, 50 girls, 11-12 and 13-14 years old) and to examine if this ability is related to individual differences in trait anxiety. Their interplay was assessed using the modified version of the Flexible Item Selection Task (FIST; Jacques and Zelazo 2001) with non-emotional stimuli (geometrical shapes) and the Emotional FIST (EM-FIST) with emotional stimuli (emotional facial expressions). Performance on the EM-FIST indicated that across the whole age range, trials requiring greater cognitive flexibility were more demanding than nonflexible ones, as revealed by both response time and accuracy performance. Moreover, flexibility demands were higher for younger children than for older ones but only in terms of response speed. Individual differences in trait anxiety moderated the impact of flexibility only on the EM-FIST. Being flexible on the EM-FIST was more demanding for high trait anxious children than for their low trait anxious peers. Lastly, overall girls responded faster than boys, but only in the EM-FIST. These findings extend the presently limited literature concerning variability in cognitive-affective flexibility during this sensitive developmental window.

It has been conjectured that basic individual differences in attentional control influence higher-level executive functioning and subsequent academic performance in children. The current study sets out to complement the limited body of research on early precursors of executive functions (EFs). It provides both a cross-sectional, as well as a longitudinal exploration of the relationship between EF and more basic attentional control mechanisms, assessed via children's performance on memory storage tasks, and influenced by individual differences in anxiety. Multiple measures of verbal and visuospatial short-term memory (STM) were administered to children between 3 and 6 years old, alongside a non-verbal measure of intelligence, and a parental report of anxiety symptoms. After 9 months, children were re-tested on the same STM measures, at which time we also administered multiple measures of executive functioning: verbal and visuospatial working memory (WM), inhibition, and shifting. A cross-sectional view of STM development indicated that between 3 and 6 years the trajectory of visuospatial STM and EF underwent a gradual linear improvement. However, between 5 and 6 years progress in verbal STM performance stagnated. Hierarchical regression models revealed that trait anxiety was negatively associated with WM and shifting, while non-verbal intelligence was positively related to WM span. When age, gender, non-verbal intelligence, and anxiety were controlled for, STM (measured at the first assessment) was a very good predictor of overall executive performance. The models were most successful in predicting WM, followed by shifting, yet poorly predicted inhibition measures. Further longitudinal research is needed to directly address the contribution of attentional control mechanisms to emerging executive functioning and to the development of problematic behavior during early development.

A growing body of evidence points to links between internalizing symptoms and various executive functioning deficits, and especially to inhibition and set-shifting difficulties. However, there is limited developmental research regarding the impact of internalizing symptoms on the shifting function, particularly during middle childhood. The current study investigated attention shifting in a sample of 108 early school age children (7-11 years) using a task-switching paradigm which required participants to alternate between emotional and nonemotional judgments. Results indicated that higher levels of internalizing symptoms (anxiety and depression) had a detrimental effect on performance efficiency (measured by response times) but not on response accuracy. This effect was only observed on emotional (and not on nonemotional) repetition trials and did not affect switching trials; moreover, it was only present when feedback was presented to participants. The findings partially support the predictions of the Attentional Control Theory in a developmental sample and suggest that individual differences in internalizing symptoms play a role in children's ability to flexibly alternate between emotional judgments.

Fragilitatea este o condiţie clinică, asociată cu procesul de îmbătrânire patologică, şi reprezintă un risc major în apariţia afecţiunilor cronice netransmisibile. În cazul persoanelor cu vârsta peste 65 de ani, funcţia cognitivă este influenţată de numeroşi factori biologici, psihologici şi sociali care contribuie la dezvoltarea afecţiunilor neurodegenerative. Declinul cognitiv joacă un rol fundamental în sindromul de fragilitate la vârstnici, ceea ce a determinat apariţia unui nou concept-fragilitatea cognitivă. Cu ajutorul unor intervenţii specifice în procesul de apariţie şi a factorilor infuenţabili, fragilitatea, spre deosebire de majoritatea bolilor neurodegenerative, poate fi parţial reversibilă.