Developmental changes in cognitive reaction time of children aged 6–12 years

Abstract

Using a visual Go/No-go paradigm and subtraction methods, we examined detailed developmental changes in the cognitive reaction times of 153 healthy children aged 6Á12 years. Three conditions were studied: simple reaction, even rate reaction (50% Go), and high rate reaction (80% Go). The subtraction of simple reaction time from even rate reaction time was considered to reflect discrimination time, while the subtraction of simple reaction time from high rate reaction time was considered to reflect the time required for inhibition. We found that simple reaction time, even rate reaction time, and high rate reaction time all declined significantly with months of age (P B0.01). Furthermore, the times for both discrimination and inhibition also showed significant declines (P B0.01), which could be considered developmental changes in neural mechanisms involved in discrimination and inhibition processes. The time for inhibition showed a weaker correlation (P B 0.01), which could indicate that the degree of developmental change is larger for the discriminative processes than for the inhibititory processes required for our task in the age range studied.

Characteristics of Cognitive Abilities among Youths Practicing Football

“…While Vänttinen et al [ 43 ] examined an improvement of response time with age in young footballers group. A similar analysis was performed in the studies by Iida et al [ 44 ] where changes in cognitive abilities were observed in the group of children between 6 to 12 years old. While Schumacher et al [ 2 ], apart from reaction time, also analyzed the relationship between the level of concentration and the age of young football players.…”

Age-related differences in predictive response timing in children: Evidence from regularly relative to irregularly paced reaction time performance

“…When focusing on the development of children's simple RT performance, which is often used as a measure of response or processing speed, overall improvement (i.e., decrease) in RT performance throughout childhood is consistently reported (Iida, Miyazaki, & Uchida, 2010;McAuley & White, 2011). However, this age-related RT effect may also be determined in part by stimulus timing effects.…”

How Do Children Deal With Conflict? A Developmental Study of Sequential Conflict Modulation

“…In the developmental literature, Go/NoGo tasks have been used widely to examine age-related changes in the ability to inhibit pre-potent responses (e.g., Luria, 1961 ; Levin et al, 1991 ; Casey et al, 1997 ; Durston et al, 2002 ; Jonkman et al, 2003 ; Brocki and Bohlin, 2004 ; Span et al, 2004 ; Johnstone et al, 2007 ; Cragg and Nation, 2008 ; Garon et al, 2008 ; Hämmerer et al, 2010 ; Iida et al, 2010 ; Huizinga and Van der Molen, 2011 ). The results of most studies employing a Go/NoGo task converge on the conclusion that the ability to inhibit a pre-potent response develops rapidly during childhood and reaches mature levels when children enter the adolescent period (Van der Molen, 2000 ).…”