Tower of London: Planning Development in Children from 6 to 13 Years of Age

INJOQUE RICLE, I.; BARREYRO, J. P.; CALERO, A.; BURIN, D. I

Spanish Journal of Psychology

Cambridge Univ. Press

Lugar: Madrid; Año: 2014 vol. 17 p. 1 - 7

Executive Function is a multidimensional construct that includes a wide range of cognitive abilities that allowsolving goal-directed behaviors efficiently. Its development begins in early childhood and continues through adolescence.A key aspect of Executive Function is planning, defined as the capacity to generate and organize the necessarystep sequence to carry out a goal-directed behavior. The aim of this study was to assess the development of planning inchildren. The Tower of London task was used in 270 children aged 6, 8, 11, and 13 years. The results showed that the timerequired to generate and organize the plan to solve a goal-directed problem increases as the difficulty of the problemincreases, and that older children need less time to solve problems with a certain level of difficulty than younger childrenF(15, 1330) = 8.787; MSE = 1.441; p < .01; η2 =.090. These results are in line with the findings that planning developsthrough childhood and even during the first years of adolescence.