Journal article
Poorer divided attention in children born very preterm can be explained by difficulty with each component task, not the executive requirement to dual-task
Child Neuropsychology, Vol.23(5), pp.510-522
2017
Abstract
Children born very preterm (VP, ≤ 32 weeks) exhibit poor performance on tasks of executive functioning. However, it is largely unknown whether this reflects the cumulative impact of non-executive deficits or a separable impairment in executive-level abilities. A dual-task paradigm was used in the current study to differentiate the executive processes involved in performing two simple attention tasks simultaneously. The executive-level contribution to performance was indexed by the within-subject cost incurred to single-task performance under dual-task conditions, termed dual-task cost. The participants included 77 VP children (mean age: 7.17 years) and 74 peer controls (mean age: 7.16 years) who completed Sky Search (selective attention), Score (sustained attention) and Sky Search DT (divided attention) from the Test of Everyday Attention for Children. The divided-attention task requires the simultaneous performance of the selective- and sustained-attention tasks. The VP group exhibited poorer performance on the selective- and divided-attention tasks, and showed a strong trend toward poorer performance on the sustained-attention task. However, there were no significant group differences in dual-task cost. These results suggest a cumulative impact of vulnerable lower-level cognitive processes on dual-tasking or divided attention in VP children, and fail to support the hypothesis that VP children show a separable impairment in executive-level abilities.
Details
- Title
- Poorer divided attention in children born very preterm can be explained by difficulty with each component task, not the executive requirement to dual-task
- Authors/Creators
- L. Delane (Author/Creator)C. Campbell (Author/Creator)D.M. Bayliss (Author/Creator)C. Reid (Author/Creator)A. Stephens (Author/Creator)N. French (Author/Creator)M. Anderson (Author/Creator)
- Publication Details
- Child Neuropsychology, Vol.23(5), pp.510-522
- Publisher
- Routledge as part of the Taylor and Francis Group
- Identifiers
- 991005543449407891
- Copyright
- 2016 Taylor & Francis
- Murdoch Affiliation
- School of Psychology and Exercise Science
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- Citation topics
- 1 Clinical & Life Sciences
- 1.72 Obstetrics & Gynecology
- 1.72.748 Neonatal Intensive Care
- Web Of Science research areas
- Clinical Neurology
- ESI research areas
- Neuroscience & Behavior