2026-10-14T06:39:51Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/33416674 2026-09-30T19:30:57Z category_37043 category_37046 category_37052 category_37124 portal_231 item_type_8 month_year_09_2026

Longitudinal Resting-State fNIRS Study of Neural Connectivity in Early Childhood Smrithi Krishnaswamy (24696264) Psychology Applied and developmental psychology Educational psychology Cognition executive function attentional control early childhood Flanker task inhibitory control cognitive development <p dir="ltr">Executive function develops rapidly during early childhood and plays an important role in a child’s ability to regulate attention, inhibit distractions, and respond effectively in learning environments. The present study examined developmental changes in attentional control during the preschool years using a child-adapted Flanker task. The study asked whether children become faster and more accurate with age, whether conflicting distractors reduce performance, and whether the effect of conflict changes across development. </p><p dir="ltr"><br></p><p dir="ltr">Participants were 32 children between the ages of 3 and 6 years recruited from the Carnegie Mellon University Children’s School. Using a longitudinal repeated-measures design, children completed multiple behavioral testing sessions across the academic year. During each session, participants completed the “Odd Fish Out” task, a child-friendly Flanker paradigm in which children identified the direction of a central fish while ignoring surrounding fish that were either congruent or incongruent with the target. Accuracy and reaction time were recorded, and age in months was used as a continuous developmental predictor. </p><p dir="ltr">Results showed clear age-related improvements in task performance. Older children responded significantly faster and more accurately than younger children, indicating developmental gains in processing efficiency and attentional control. Trial congruency also affected performance: children were more accurate on congruent trials than incongruent trials, demonstrating that conflicting distractors interfered with correct responding. However, reaction time did not differ significantly across trial types. In addition, the size of the congruency effect in accuracy did not significantly decrease with age, suggesting that although overall performance improved, the difficulty of resolving conflict remained stable across the sampled age range. </p><p dir="ltr">These findings provide evidence for substantial growth in executive functioning during early childhood while suggesting that improvements may reflect increases in efficiency rather than increases in the ability to ignore distractions. The study contributes to a growing understanding of preschool cognitive development and provides a behavioral foundation for future work examining the neural mechanisms underlying executive function.</p> 2026-04-23T00:00:00Z Text Thesis 10.1184/R1/33416674.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/Longitudinal_Resting-State_fNIRS_Study_of_Neural_Connectivity_in_Early_Childhood/33416674 CC BY 4.0