Abstract
The goal of this study was to examine the development of attention and response inhibition from ages 5 to 7. Forty children (20 5βyearβolds and 20 7βyearβolds) completed four counterbalanced phases of a continuous performance task. Phase 1 was designed to measure attention without distraction, Phase 2 was designed to measure attention with distraction, Phase 3 was designed to measure attention and response inhibition without distraction, and Phase 4 was designed to measure attention and response inhibition with distraction. With regard to attention, 7βyearβolds performed significantly better than 5βyearβolds. This age difference was more pronounced when distraction was present. With regard to response inhibition, there were no significant age differences. These results appear to suggest that attention improves between ages 5 and 7 but response inhibition does not. However, conclusions regarding response inhibition were limited because the distraction appeared to have had too powerful an effect on the 5βyearβolds. Implications and future directions are discussed. Copyright Β© 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.