The Real Animal Size Test (RAST)
A New Measure of Inhibitory Control for Young Children
Abstract
Inhibitory control disturbances are reported in numerous developmental and acquired neuropsychological disorders of young children. In this study, a new assessment tool, the Real Animal Size Test (RAST) was tested. It includes four conditions: The first two conditions assess speed of processing and require making quick decisions, by pressing a response key, on the real size of animals and the on-screen size of big or small rectangles; the third and fourth condition (combined into one) require the child to decide the real size of animals displayed in congruent or incongruent size on the screen. Participants in the study were 90 children aged 5–9 years old. The results confirmed that the RAST provides a good measure of inhibitory control in children. In a second experiment, 15 children 5–9 years old with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder symptoms (ADHD) participated; the RAST was also administered. The clinical pertinence of the RAST for ADHD symptoms is discussed.
References
1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
(2004). Inhibitory functioning in Alzheimer’s disease. Brain, 127, 949–964.
(1999). Identification and description of new tests of executive functioning in children. Child Neuropsychology, 5, 115–129.
(1997). Behavioral inhibition, sustained attention, and executive functions: Constructing a unifying theory of ADHD. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 65–94.
(1999). Response inhibition in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews, 5, 177–184.
(1987). Neuropsychological development of nonverbal behaviors attributed to the frontal lobes. Developmental Neuropsychology, 3, 275–298.
(2002). Response inhibition, hyperactivity, and conduct problems. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 31, 242–251.
(2002). School readiness: Integrating cognition and emotion in a neurobiological conceptualization of children’s functioning at school entry. American Psychologist, 57, 111–127.
(2001). Individual differences in inhibitory control and children’s theory of mind. Child Development, 72, 1032–1053.
(2002). Normal development of prefrontal cortex from birth to young adulthood: Cognitive functions, anatomy, and biochemistry. In , Principles of frontal lobe function, (pp. 466–503). New York: Oxford University Press.
(1996). Development of an aspect of executive control: Development of the ability to remember what I said and to “do as I say. Not as I do”. Developmental Psychobiology, 29, 315–334.
(1974). Effects of noise letters upon identification of a target letter in a nonsearch task. Perception and Psychophysics, 16, 143–149.
(2004). The reading span test and its predictive power for reading comprehension ability. Journal of Memory and Language, 51, 136–158.
(1994). The relationship between cognition and action: Performance of 3 .5- to 7-year-olds on Stroop-like day-night test. Cognition, 53, 129–153.
(1998). Finding your marbles: Does preschoolers’ strategic behavior predict later understanding of mind?. Developmental Psychology, 34, 1326–1339.
(1998). Manual for the NEPSY. San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation.
(1991). Developmental changes in performance on tests of purported frontal lobe functioning. Developmental Neuropsychology, 7, 377–395.
(2004). Selective impairment of inhibition after TBI in children. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 26, 589–597.
(1966). Higher cortical functions in man. New York: Basic Books.
(1991). Half a century of research on the Stroop effect: An integrative review. Psychological Bulletin, 109, 163–203.
(2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex frontal lobe tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41, 49–100.
(1996). Relationships and distinctions among the concepts of attention, memory, and executive function: A developmental perspective. In , Attention, memory, and executive function (pp. 11–16). Baltimore, MD: Brookes.
(2003). Dissociation of perceptual and motor inhibition processes through the use of novel computerized conflict tasks. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 9, 25–30.
(2000). On inhibition/disinhibition in developmental psychopathology: Views from cognitive and personality psychology and a working inhibition taxonomy. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 220–246.
(2001). Is ADHD a disinhibitory disorder?. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 571–598.
(1985). Neuropsychological development of behavior attributed to frontal lobe functioning in children. Developmental Neuropsychology, 1, 349–370.
(2001). Short-term memory, working memory, and inhibitory control in children with difficulties in arithmetic problem-solving. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 80, 44–57.
(2005). Color-object interference in young children: A Stroop effect in children 3½–6½ years old. Cognitive Development, 20, 256–278.
(1981). Les Progressive Matrices Couleur
([The colored progressive matrices] . Paris: Edition et Application Psychologiques.1996). An interactive framework for examining prefrontal cognitive processes. Developmental Neuropsychology, 12, 105–126.
(1969). The color-word interference test: The effects of varied color-word combinations upon verbal response latency. Journal of Psychology, 72, 219–231.
(1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18, 643–662.
(1991). A normative-developmental study of executive function: A window on prefrontal function in children. Developmental Neuropsychology, 7, 131–149.
(1970). Hyperactivity. In , Symptoms of psychopathology (pp. 397–417). New York: Wiley.
(2003). A new Stroop measure of inhibitory function development: Typical developmental trends. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 44, 561–575.
(2002). Executive function in typical and atypical development. In , Handbook of childhood cognitive development (pp. 445–469). Oxford, England: Blackwell.
(1997). Early development of executive function: A problem-solving framework. Review of General Psychology, 1, 1–29.
(