The structure of working memory from 4 to 15 years of age

The structure of working memory and its development across the childhood years were investigated in children 4-15 years of age. The children were given multiple assessments of each component of the A. D. Baddeley and G. Hitch (1974) working memory model. Broadly similar linear functions characterized performance on all measures as a function of age. From 6 years onward, a model consisting of 3 distinct but correlated factors corresponding to the working memory model provided a good fit to the data. The results indicate that the basic modular structure of working memory is present from 6 years of age and possibly earlier, with each component undergoing sizable expansion in functional capacity throughout the early and middle school years to adolescence.     

Hindsight bias from 3 to 95 years of age

Upon learning the outcome to a problem, people tend to believe that they knew it all along (hindsight bias). Here, we report the first study to trace the development of hindsight bias across the life span. One hundred ninety-four participants aged 3 to 95 years completed 3 tasks designed to measure visual and verbal hindsight bias. All age groups demonstrated hindsight bias on all 3 tasks; however, preschoolers and older adults exhibited more bias than older children and younger adults. Multinomial processing tree analyses of these data revealed that preschoolers' enhanced hindsight bias resulted from them substituting the correct answer for their original answer in their recall (a qualitative error). Conversely, older adults' enhanced hindsight bias resulted from them forgetting their original answer and recalling an answer closer to, but not equal to, the correct answer (a quantitative error). We discuss these findings in relation to mechanisms of memory, perspective taking, theory of mind, and executive function.     

The development of violence from age 8 to 61

The main aim of this study is to investigate the development of violence from childhood to adulthood. In the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD), 411 London males have been followed up from age 8 to 48 in interviews, and from age 10 to 61 in criminal records; 19% were convicted for violence. There was a surprising amount of violence committed at older ages (40–61). The number of violence convictions was similar at ages 10–20, 21–39, and 40–61. There was considerable continuity in violent offending from ages 10–20 to 40–61. There was also continuity in self-reported violence from ages 15–18 to 43–48, and violence convictions were related to self-reported violence at all ages. The most important childhood risk factors for violence convictions were high daring or risk-taking, low verbal intelligence, a disrupted family, harsh parental discipline, high hyperactivity, and large family size. The extent to which these risk factors predicted violence at ages 40–61 was noteworthy. The “integrated cognitive antisocial potential (ICAP)” theory was proposed to explain the development of violence, and methods of preventing violence, targeting childhood risk factors, were reviewed.     

Development of adolescence‐limited,late‐onset,and persistent offenders from age 8 to age 48

This article investigates the life success at ages 32 and 48 of four categories of males: nonoffenders, adolescence‐limited offenders (convicted only at ages 10–20), late‐onset offenders (convicted only at ages 21–50), and persistent offenders (convicted at both ages 10–20 and 21–50). In the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, 411 South London males have been followed up from age 8 to 48 in repeated personal interviews. There was considerable continuity in offending over time. Persistent offenders had the longest criminal careers (averaging 18.4 years), and most of them had convictions for violence. Persistent offenders were leading the most unsuccessful lives at ages 32 and 48, although all categories of males became more successful with age. By age 48, the life success of adolescence‐limited offenders was similar to that of nonoffenders. The most important risk factors at ages 8–18 that predicted which offenders would persist after age 21 were heavy drinking at age 18, hyperactivity at ages 12–14, and low popularity and harsh discipline at ages 8–10. The most important risk factors that predicted which nonoffenders would onset after age 21 were poor housing and low nonverbal IQ at ages 8–10, high neuroticism at age 16, and anti‐establishment attitudes and motoring convictions at age 18. It was suggested that nervousness and neuroticism may have protected children at risk from offending in adolescence and the teenage years. Aggr. Behav. 35:150–163, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Predicting dyslexia at 8 years of age using neonatal brain responses

Auditory event-related potentials recorded at birth to speech and nonspeech syllables from six scalp electrodes discriminated between newborn infants who 8 years later would be characterized as dyslexic, poor, or normal readers. These findings indicate that reading problems can be identified and possible interventions undertaken up to 9 years earlier than is currently possible.     

Colic and fussing in infancy,and sensory processing at 3 to 8 years of age

The purpose of this follow‐up study was to examine whether a group of 28 clinic‐referred infants with colic, excessive crying, or both at 4 to 12 weeks demonstrated sensory processing, coping, and behavioral/attention regulation difficulties at 3 to 8 years of age. Seventy‐five percent of the sample demonstrated atypical behavioral responses to sensory experiences. Hours of fussing during infancy significantly correlated with inattention, emotional reactivity, touch processing, environmental coping, and externalizing behavior at 3 to 8 years, but not hours of crying. The most striking result was that children with more hours of early fussing showed less efficient sensory processing, poorer coping with the environment, and more attention/hyperactivity problems compared to those with less hours of fussing. Results suggest that hours of fussing rather than crying could be an early marker for infants at risk.     

Self-esteem development from age 14 to 30 years: a longitudinal study

We examined the development of self-esteem in adolescence and young adulthood. Data came from the Young Adults section of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which includes 8 assessments across a 14-year period of a national probability sample of 7,100 individuals age 14 to 30 years. Latent growth curve analyses indicated that self-esteem increases during adolescence and continues to increase more slowly in young adulthood. Women and men did not differ in their self-esteem trajectories. In adolescence, Hispanics had lower self-esteem than Blacks and Whites, but the self-esteem of Hispanics subsequently increased more strongly, so that at age 30 Blacks and Hispanics had higher self-esteem than Whites. At each age, emotionally stable, extraverted, and conscientious individuals experienced higher self-esteem than emotionally unstable, introverted, and less conscientious individuals. Moreover, at each age, high sense of mastery, low risk taking, and better health predicted higher self-esteem. Finally, the results suggest that normative increase in sense of mastery accounts for a large proportion of the normative increase in self-esteem.     

Motor planning between 4 and 7 years of age: Changes linked to executive functions

In the present study, we adopted the conceptual frameworks of Miyake et al. (2000) (organization of executive functions) and Sergeant (2000) (linking executive function to motor behaviour) to assess developmental changes in executive functions and motor behaviour, using a planning task with a sample of 4–7-years old children. More precisely, the aim of the study was to characterize the development of motor response planning between the ages of 4 and 7 as a measure of the integration of multiple executive function processes, namely inhibition, shifting and working memory, and to gain insight into the concurrent developmental contributions of these processes. Participants were divided into two groups: group 1 was composed of 24 children aged 4–5 years and group 2 was composed of 20 children aged 6–7 years. Each participant took tests for shifting, inhibition, working memory and motor planning (the egg-planning task). Our results suggest that the egg-planning task requires the inhibition of a pre-potent but inappropriate response, and to a lesser extent the manipulation of working memory strategies. These results are discussed in relation to the development of each executive function component.     

Holistic face processing is mature at 4 years of age: evidence from the composite face effect

Although it is acknowledged that adults integrate features into a representation of the whole face, there is still some disagreement about the onset and developmental course of holistic face processing. We tested adults and children from 4 to 6 years of age with the same paradigm measuring holistic face processing through an adaptation of the composite face effect [Young, A. W., Hellawell, D., & Hay, D. C. (1987). Configurational information in face perception. Perception, 16, 747-759]. In Experiment 1, only 6-year-old children and adults tended to perceive the two identical top parts as different, suggesting that holistic face processing emerged at 6 years of age. However, Experiment 2 suggested that these results could be due to a response bias in children that was cancelled out by always presenting two faces in the same format on each trial. In this condition, all age groups present strong composite face effects, suggesting that holistic face processing is mature as early as after 4 years of experience with faces.     

Lying in the elementary school years: verbal deception and its relation to second-order belief understanding

The development of lying to conceal one's own transgression was examined in school-age children. Children (N=172) between 6 and 11 years of age were asked not to peek at the answer to a trivia question while left alone in a room. Half of the children could not resist temptation and peeked at the answer. When the experimenter asked them whether they had peeked, the majority of children lied. However, children's subsequent verbal statements, made in response to follow-up questioning, were not always consistent with their initial denial and, hence, leaked critical information to reveal their deceit. Children's ability to maintain consistency between their initial lie and subsequent verbal statements increased with age. This ability is also positively correlated with children's 2nd-order belief scores, suggesting that theory of mind understanding plays an important role in children's ability to lie consistently.     

Predicting literacy at age 7 from preliteracy at age 4

Early literacy experience and preliteracy knowledge have been shown to predict later literacy outcomes. Using a representative sample of 3,052 same-sex twin pairs (6,104 children) in the United Kingdom, we explored phenotypic and etiological interrelationships among early literacy experience, preliteracy knowledge, and school-based literacy outcomes (reading and writing). Both literacy experience and preliteracy knowledge at age 4 significantly and independently predicted literacy at age 7. Both measures also showed genetic influence that significantly predicted literacy at age 7, although genetic mediation was stronger for preliteracy knowledge than for early literacy experience. However, for both measures, shared environmental factors explained most of the association with literacy at age 7.     

Knowing minds, controlling actions: the developmental relations between theory of mind and executive function from 2 to 4 years of age

This longitudinal study examined the concurrent and predictive relations between executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM) in 82 preschoolers who were assessed when they were 2, 3, and 4 years old. The results showed that the concurrent relation between EF and ToM, after controlling for age, verbal ability, and sex, was significant at 3 and 4 years of age but not at 2 years of age. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that EF at age 2 significantly predicted ToM at age 3 and that EF at age 3 significantly predicted ToM at age 4, over and above the effects of age, verbal ability, and prior performance on ToM tasks. However, ToM at ages 2 and 3 did not explain a significant amount of variance in EF at age 4. Bootstrap procedures revealed that verbal ability at age 3 fully mediated the relation between ToM at age 2 and EF at age 4.     

Development of egocentric and allocentric spatial representations from childhood to elderly age

Spatial reference frames are fundamental to represent the position of objects or places. Although research has reported changes in spatial memory abilities during childhood and elderly age, no study has assessed reference frames processing during the entire lifespan using the same task. Here, we aimed at providing some preliminary data on the capacity to process reference frames in 283 healthy participants from 6 to 89 years of age. A spatial memory task requiring egocentric/allocentric verbal judgments about objects in peri-/extrapersonal space was used. The main goals were: (1) tracing a baseline of the normal process of development of these spatial components; (2) clarifying if reference frames are differently vulnerable to age-related effects. Results showed a symmetry between children of 6–7 years and older people of 80–89 years who were slower and less accurate than all other age groups. As regards processing time, age had a strong effect on the allocentric component, especially in extrapersonal space, with a longer time in 6- to 7-year-old children and 80- to 89-year-old adults. The egocentric component looked less affected by aging. Regarding the level of spatial ability (accuracy), the allocentric ability appeared less sensitive to age-related variations, whereas the egocentric ability progressively improved from 8 years and declined from 60 years. The symmetry in processing time and level of spatial ability is discussed in relation to the development of executive functions and to the structural and functional changes due to incomplete maturation (in youngest children) and deterioration (in oldest adults) of underlying cerebral areas.     

Relations between inhibition, executive functioning, and ADHD symptoms: a longitudinal study from age 5 to 8(1/2) years.

The present study examined whether inhibition measured as early as preschool can predict more general executive functioning and ADHD symptoms at school age. In contrast to previous studies, the present study focused specifically on ADHD symptoms rather than general disruptive behavior problems, and boys and girls were studied separately. The main result was that inhibition was strongly related to ADHD symptoms both in school and at home for boys, but only in the school context for girls. Early inhibition was also significantly related to later executive functioning, and concurrent relations were found between executive functioning and ADHD symptoms, although in both cases only for boys. Besides this, inhibition added significantly to the variance, beyond that of executive functioning, which meant that for boys, inhibition and the other executive functioning explained about half the variance in inattention problems. The stronger relation between inhibition, executive functioning and ADHD symptoms for boys compared to girls could suggests that either the predictors of ADHD are different for the two sexes, or girls are more often equipped with some factor that protects them from developing ADHD symptoms, despite poor executive functioning. However, it is also possible that relations are just harder to demonstrate for girls due to their lower incidence of disruptive problem behaviors.