Development of inhibitory processes during the first years of primary schooling

AYDMUNE, YESICA; INTROZZI, ISABEL; VERNUCCI, SANTIAGO; ZAMORA, ELIANA

Psychology and Neuroscience

American Psychological Association

Año: 2022 vol. 15 p. 52 - 66

1984-3054

Inhibition is regarded a key executive function. An influential current theoretical approach supports the existence of different inhibitory processes-perceptual, cognitive, and response inhibition. Although it has been suggested that inhibitory processes have specific development trajectories, studies that simultaneously analyze these processes through the identification of particular trajectories are still scarce and there are no studies during the first years ofschool-age. This is an important issue since at this stage inhibitory processes are expected to be differentiated, experiencing improvements in their functioning and intervening in the performance of various complex activities. Objective: This work aimed to analyze the development of perceptual, cognitive, and response inhibition in children who are in the firstyears of primary school. Methods: In Study 1 (cross-sectional), 173 children of 6-8 years of age were evaluated with perceptual, cognitive, and response inhibition tasks. In Study 2(longitudinal), 58 children were reevaluated with the same tasks in two more times: 6 months and 1 year after the first evaluation. Different types of ANOVAs were implemented. Results: Study 1 revealed differences in performance between age groups in perceptual inhibition. Significant differences between 6 years old children with respect to 7 and 8 years old, were observed. Study 2 showed that children improved their performance in perceptual inhibition after 1 year. Improvements in cognitive inhibition were found after 1 year for children aged 6 years old. Conclusions: These results contribute to the understanding of the development of inhibition, and provide evidence favoring the nonunitary approach of inhibition