The Early Childhood Inhibitory Touchscreen Task

Abstract

Research into the earliest development of inhibitory control (IC) is limited by a lack of suitable tasks. In particular, commonly used IC tasks frequently have too high language and working memory demands for children under 3 years of age. Furthermore, researchers currently tend to shift to a new set of IC tasks between toddlerhood and early childhood, raising doubts about whether the same function is being measured. Tasks that are structurally equivalent across age could potentially help resolve this issue. In the current report (N = 300), a new structurally equivalent response inhibition task, the Early Childhood Inhibitory Touchscreen Task (ECITT), was developed. In the new task, participants have to overcome a tendency to respond to a frequently rewarded location on a touchscreen and instead make an alternative response. The ECITT was validated in three independent studies. Result indicated that inhibitory performance on the task improved significantly between 2 and 2½ years of age. Furthermore, inhibitory performance on a faster-paced version of the same task showed a similar life-span developmental course (4–84 years) to other IC tasks, and was significantly correlated with Stop-signal performance. Effects were also replicated outside a lab setting. Not only does the ECITT measure response inhibition across childhood and adulthood, it also extends the assessment of this key cognitive function earlier, into toddlerhood. Because the task is simple and structurally equivalent across age, future longitudinal studies should benefit from using the ECITT to investigate the development of IC consistently across the toddler years.

A Novel Approach to Measure Executive Functions in Students: An Evaluation of Two Child-Friendly Apps

“…The authors also found low correlations among the executive function tasks in their study and mention that limited task variation in the Go/No-Go task was a problem (for more information please see Willoughby et al, 2019). Similarly, Petersen et al (2016) and Holmboe et al (2019) mention variability issues with regards to inhibition tasks. Petersen et al (2016) explain that ceiling and floor effects are associated with lower variability in the measured construct, which increases Type II error and reduces power to detect associations with other variables.…”

“…An issue in the present study was ceiling effects within our EF performance data. Ceiling effects are a consistent issue within the literature where scholars aim to measure EFs in children, especially when measuring inhibition (Holmboe et al, 2019;Willoughby et al, 2019). For example, Willoughby et al (2019) found floor and ceiling effects on several inhibition tasks with children (Go/No-Go, Silly Sound Stroop tasks, and Spatial Conflict Arrows).…”

“…Another reason for floor and ceiling effects can be a small number of trials. Generally, tasks for children are kept short to suit their limited attention span, however, having a small number of trials increases the risk of low variability and ceiling effects in children (Holmboe et al, 2019). Thus, researchers interested in measuring inhibition with children need to be cautious with their selection of trials and outcome variables in order to avoid low variability associated with floor and ceiling effects.…”

“…Thus, for researchers designing new EF tasks, the challenge is not just the design of the task, but also the evaluation of children's experience with the task. This lack of evidence to support assertions of child-friendliness is a common issue among tasks that have been recently designed for children (Cianchetti et al, 2007;Zelazo, 2015;De Greeff et al, 2016;Howard and Melhuish, 2017;Dawson and Guare, 2018;Holmboe et al, 2019;Willoughby et al, 2019).…”

“… Miyake et al, 2000 ; Diamond, 2016 ; Zelazo et al, 2016 ). Recent attempts have been made to design child-friendly tools to measure EFs in children but a number of challenges persist ( Zelazo, 2015 ; Howard and Melhuish, 2017 ; Józsa et al, 2017 ; Obradović et al, 2018 ; Holmboe et al, 2019 ; Willoughby et al, 2019 ). The current study presents the first step toward validating newly developed executive function tools.…”