Developmentally Sensitive Measures of Executive Function in Preschool Children

In the citing paper

“This overlap was driven by three tasks that met our definition of EF and have explicitly been defined as such by leaders in the field: the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulder task (McClelland et al., 2014), the Kansas ReflectionImpulsivity Scale for Preschoolers (KRISP; Carlson, 2005), and the Preschool Self-Regulation Assessment (PSRA), which includes peg/pencil tapping and other tasks that require children”

In the citing paper

“The Simon Says task is significantly more difficult for children than the Bear/Dragon task, despite both being Go/No-Go paradigms.”

In the citing paper

“One paradigm that has been shown to be age appropriate across the preschool period is the Bear/Dragon task (Carlson, 2005).”

In the citing paper

“Delay of gratification or self-control tasks can be administered in young preschool children, with the delay period adjusted according to child's age.”

In the citing paper

“These tasks are challenging even for older children and preschoolers are rarely able to reverse sequences of 4 or greater.”

In the citing paper

“Substantial improvement in inhibitory control is observed in the preschool period (Carlson, 2005).”

In the citing paper

“On the Bear/Dragon task (Go/No-Go task), only about half of young 3-year-olds (< 3½ yrs) are able to resist responding to the instructions of the Dragon puppet, however this increases to 75% for older 3-year-olds (> 3½ yrs) and by age 5 years most children are successfully completing this task (Carlson, 2005).”

In the citing paper

“Traditional working memory tasks can also be administered to preschoolers including backward digit span and backward block span.”

In the citing paper

“These anti-imitation tasks are suitable across the preschool age range, although young 3-year-olds may struggle.”

In the citing paper

“While Carlson et al (2005) also showed continued maturation of inhibitory control across 3 to 5 years on delayed gratification tasks, performance again varied and the discrepancy may be explained by the intrinsic value of the gift.”

In the citing paper

“In terms of shifting attention, 3-year-olds really struggle to shift sorting categories on the Dimensional Change Card Sort test, but this perseverative behavior is far less common in older 4-year-olds (Carlson, 2005).”

In the citing paper

“Carlson et al. (2005) found that only about half of the children aged between 3 and 4½ years were able to pass tasks that required a response that conflict with their instinctive or dominant response (e.g.Day-Night).”

In the citing paper

“Preschoolers have difficulty on complex response inhibition tasks.”

In the citing paper

“For example, very few 3-year-olds are able to correctly reverse the sequence of three digits but by 5-years of age most children have this capacity (Carlson, 2005).”