Sex and age-related differences in inhibitory control in typically developing children

ABSTRACT

The inhibitory control (IC) is one of the basic executive functions (EFs) that all other EFs are hierarchically perched on this ability. Current knowledge of IC development in the elementary school years is limited. In this study, three tasks; go/no-go task (response inhibition), flanker task (attentional inhibition), and circle-tracing time task (motor inhibition) were administered to investigate sex and age-related differences in IC in 240 children (120 boys) aged 7–12 yearspreschoolers. Results showed some gender differences in neutral reaction time (RT) in flanker task and go accuracy number in go/no-go task. Also, results suggest the existence of age-related differences in go accuracy number and RT in go/no-go task, neutral RT in flanker task, and motor inhibition index in circle-tracing task that these correlations follow a nonlinear relationship. Our study indicates that IC develop rapidly in the first two years of formal schooling then proceeds at a slower rate.

KEYWORDS:

• Inhibitory control
• age
• sex
• go/no-go task
• flanker task
• circle-tracing task

Acknowledgements

We thank the participants for their participation in this study. VN generated the study idea and edited the final manuscript. SS and BS contributed to study search and selection, carried out the statistical analyses and wrote the final manuscript. All authors edited the manuscript and approved the final version.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Saeid Sadeghi

Saeid Sadeghi is a child psychologist and researcher in clinical neuroscience.

Bita Shalani

Bita Shalani is a child psychologist and researcher.

Vahid Nejati

Vahid Nejati is an associate Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience.