Attention sub-functions as concurrent and longitudinal predictors of literacy and numeracy

As we anticipated, individual differences in executive attention predicted concurrent

abilities across domains (e.g., cardinality understanding, non-verbal addition and subtraction,

letter and vocabulary knowledge), over and above age and non-verbal ability. These findings

are consistent with the growing number of studies investigating executive control in

preschoolers and its relationship to developing cognition, either concurrently (Bull et al., 2011)

or longitudinally (Bull et al., 2008; Welsh et al., 2010). The current findings therefore provide a

direct demonstration that cognitive building blocks to early numeracy and literacy depend on

effortful control in early childhood. Of note, scores for this attention sub-function did not

predict phoneme matching ability, which is entirely consistent with the co-existence of both

strong domain-specific and domain-general influences on the development of skills leading to

early reading and language (e.g., Welsh et al., 2010). Our strong domain-specific correlations

(for example, between vocabulary and letter knowledge) also support this co-existence.

However, and contrary to our expectations, the executive attention factor did not significantly

predict longitudinal outcomes for either numeracy or literacy. Multiple reasons could account

for this finding. First and simplest, our executive attention measures may have tapped basic

stimulus response conflict, but may not have been sensitive to more complex aspects of

attentional control (e.g., maintenance of task relevant information, shifting) that overlap with

those executive skills known to be longitudinal predictors of outcome in older children, for

whom these skills are most easily measured. Secondly, limited sample size may have masked

subtle longitudinal effects. A third and also plausible account is that for children over the full
age range between 3 and 6 years of age, rather than a more discrete age group (e.g., 4 ½ year-

olds, Bull et al., 2008), there exist developmental differences in the extent to which executive

attention skills contribute to these outcome measures longitudinally, rather than concurrently.

Such differences may have been masked here. Future studies could address these possibilities

by assessing additional executive attention processes (within the practical constraints posed by

testing 3-year-olds, who already worked amazingly hard to complete the current protocol).

Independently of sample size or age distribution, the attention factor encompassing

sustained and selective attention skills behaved differently: it did not relate significantly to

concurrent performance, but it significantly predicted basic numeracy, though not single word

reading, a year later. In the absence of previous data on the relationships between these

additional attentional processes and longitudinal changes in specific domains, these findings

are to our knowledge entirely novel. They are consistent with empirical findings in adults: it has

been suggested that selection of task-relevant information may be critical to aspects of number

knowledge, even in adults (Ansari, Lyons, van Eimeren, & Xu, 2007; Sathian et al., 1999). We

therefore argue that, especially in younger children, while executive attention is critical to using

well-learnt representations online (and therefore most relevant concurrently), other aspects of

attention may be most (or, at least, more) critical to learning about them, i.e., to establishing

and consolidating representations over time (and thus, playing a role longitudinally). The

domain-specificity of this relationship, i.e., the fact that this attention sub-function predicted

numeracy, but not single word reading, could depend on a variety of factors that certainly

deserve to be explored further. One factor might relate to the modality of the to-be-attended

stimuli: as we focused entirely on visual attentional processes, future studies will need to
investigate whether relationships to word reading (and to the earlier precursors of reading,

such as phoneme awareness) are stronger for auditory attention. Another might be the nature

of the domain-specific outcomes themselves: establishing the foundations for subsequent

efficient reading comprehension may depend to a greater extent on earlier sustained and

selective attention than single word reading does, as an index of literacy performance. However

intriguing, we remain hesitant about our own speculations and urge future researchers to test

them empirically.

In addition to extending our understanding of the relationships between attention and domain-

specific outcomes, the current study clarified the relationships between cognitive indices of

attention and observable classroom behaviours often assumed to overlap with them. This was

not reflected by our data. Furthermore, we demonstrated that previously reported

relationships with domain-specific outcomes may have been driven by specific items

contributing to the Cognitive Problems/Inattention subscale which ask directly about children’s

difficulties with reading and numeracy, a factor that was not explored by the previous studies

using the CTRS-R:S (e.g., Dally, 2006; Rabiner & Coie, 2000). In turn, this highlights the need to

exercise care before assuming equivalence between behavioural rating subscales and

underlying cognitive constructs.

In conclusion, ours is the first study to: 1) trace developmental trajectories and relations

across attention sub-components in very young children on three closely-matched

experimental attention tasks and classroom-based indices of inattention and hyperactivity; 2)

measure the impact of differences in attention on domain-specific precursors to early reading

and numeracy concurrently; and 3) assess their role as longitudinal predictors of single word

reading and basic numeracy. Our findings yielded a distinct pattern of sub-functions of

attention in young children, compared to older individuals, and point to differential

developmental trajectories across these constructs. Furthermore, the early attention measures

predicted distinct concurrent versus longitudinal domain-specific outcomes, highlighting their

developmental differentiation. Clearly, attention is not a unitary construct, even in young

children, and distinct attentional processes play critical roles in the subsequent development of

domain-specific skills. This study of typical development sets the stage for examining the same

attention sub-functions in atypical populations who present with learning deficits in literacy and

numeracy.

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Discussion

The first aim of this study was to explore the developmental trajectories and combined

structure of sub-functions of attention in young children, by using comparable marker tasks

designed to tap attentional processes including, but not exclusive to, executive attention in

children younger than six. The literature on older children and adults supports the emergence

of at least three attentional sub-functions (executive, sustained and selective attention), each

with different developmental trajectories. In contrast, our data pinpointed differential

developmental trajectories across the three marker tasks, and these aligned along two, rather

than three factors, encompassing respectively aspects of selective and sustained attention on

the one hand, and executive attention on the other. Secondly, we aimed to assess whether

these underlying attention sub-functions predicted domain-specific skills in the same way. As

we had hypothesised, the executive attention factor predicted concurrent domain-specific

abilities known to predict both later reading (vocabulary and letter knowledge) and basic

numeracy (cardinality, nonverbal addition and subtraction). Thirdly, we had expected emerging

executive attention to predict both simple literacy and numeracy outcome longitudinally, but

this was not the case. In contrast, abilities to select and sustain attention were predictors of

domain-specific skills, basic numeracy but not single word reading, a year later. Finally, we

examined the relationships of classroom-based behavioural markers of inattention and

hyperactivity and domain-specific outcomes. These behavioural measures did not predict either

concurrent or later domain-specific skills once we controlled for subscale item contents to

exclude those targeting academic skills directly.

The development and structure of attentional sub-functions from 3 to 6 years of age

The current study met the difficult challenge of developing comparable marker tasks

suitable for such a young age group and sensitive to change over this dynamic period. On our

Continuous Performance Test (a classic measure of sustained attention), accuracy and speed

improved linearly. On our Visual Search task (a classic measure of selective attention), speed

and accuracy progressed linearly, suggesting gradual improvements in performance. On our

Spatial Conflict task (a measure of executive attention) children were faster and tended to be

more accurate at responding to spatially congruent than incongruent stimuli and, interestingly,
this ability to deal with conflict did not differ across age groups. Findings from each task are

therefore consistent with the extant literature, but also clearly advance our knowledge in a

number of important ways. Firstly, in our adaptation of the traditional CPT task, 3-year-olds

managed to perform well above floor, both in terms of hits and commission errors (cf.

Akshoomoff, 2002). Secondly, consistent with earlier results (e.g., Scerif et al., 2004), on the

Visual Search task the youngest children were slow and committed a high number of errors, but

performance improved with age, indicating a developing proficiency in selecting targets

appropriately and ignoring distracter stimuli. Thirdly, the Spatial Conflict task replicated

previous studies because performance for congruent stimuli was better than for incongruent

stimuli but, like other researchers, we did not find age-related changes in conflict scores

(Gerardi-Caulton, 2000; Rothbart, Ellis, Rueda, & Posner, 2003). However, the current data are

revealing because they pinpoint differential developmental trajectories for visual search and

continuous performance measures on the one hand, and spatial conflict scores and impulsive

commission errors on the continuous performance task on the other. The differentiation

between trajectories of executive attention and other attentional sub-functions is consistent

with data obtained with older children and different tasks (e.g., Breckenridge, unpublished;

Klenberg et al., 2001; Rueda et al., 2004).

But why would the ability to deal with spatial conflict be relatively stable over this age

range, given the large literature suggesting gradual improvements in executive control until

adolescence and beyond? A simple account would be that younger or less able children in our

sample simply did not understand task requirements and therefore their (presumably greater)

difficulties with the control of conflict were masked by poor overall performance. We showed
this to be unlikely, however, since children in all age groups performed significantly above

chance on Central trials, clearly demonstrating their understanding of the task. It is nonetheless

the case that younger children in our sample did not produce as many responses (correct or

incorrect) as older children within the time-limit set, and overall accuracy might have been

higher had this time-limit been extended. Similarly, high accuracy in the older children in the

Spatial Conflict task might have camouflaged actual development in executive attention,

although this would not account for the absence of age effects on reaction time-based conflict

scores. We think that a far more plausible account is that the kind of executive attention

recruited by the spatial conflict task is an early emerging one compared to others. This in turn

demonstrates how it is critical to consider task-specific trajectories carefully, especially for tasks

that require inhibitory control at different information processing levels (for a similar argument

regarding inhibition see Huizinga, Dolan, & van der Molen, 2006, for older children and

adolescents, and Klenberg et al., 2001, for 3 to 12-year-old children).

Notwithstanding these task-specific considerations, a comparison of the trajectories

across the three tasks indicates a differential rate of development for executive attention on

the one hand, and sustained and selective abilities on the other. Further support for

differentiations across attention sub-functions stems from our finding that two factors

encompassed individual differences in children’s attention. Conflict scores from the Spatial

Conflict task and commission errors on the CPT, good indices of executive control, actually

loaded together on a separate factor. This is consistent with studies that have identified

executive attention as a distinct component of attention in adults (Fan, McCandliss, Sommer,

Raz, & Posner, 2002; Robertson, Ward, Ridgeway, & Nimmo-Smith, 1996), and children
(Breckenridge, unpublished; Manly et al., 2001; Rueda et al., 2004). In contrast, the other factor

encompassed measures related to aspects of sustained attention (speed of detection for

infrequent targets and likelihood of missing them) and selective attention (selecting accurately

and quickly targets embedded amongst distracters). This has clear theoretical implications:

attention processes, like other cognitive skills, may have a simpler factor structure earlier in

childhood, as has been recently suggested for executive functions themselves (Wiebe et al.,

2011), and become increasingly specialized with age, with sustained and selective attention

being closely related in early childhood but further subdividing in later childhood. In the future,

precise developmental drivers for this increasing differentiation (e.g., changing demands from

the environment, changes in attentional control abilities themselves) need to be investigated

empirically. It is clear that the two factors identified did not simply reflect reaction time and

accuracy respectively, because speed and errors did not neatly load on one or the other.

Notably, these factors were not organised by task; rather, independent measures from each

task mapped onto distinct sub-functions, as exemplified by commission and omission errors on

the CPT. Wilding and Cornish (2007) had already discussed how different measures from within

the same attentional tasks may load on varying constructs, highlighting the danger of extracting

a single measure from what are quite clearly cognitively diverse tasks, or assuming a priori that

a single marker task is truly a pure measure of a certain attentional task. This point was

reinforced when we investigated the relationships between these indices of attention and

domain-specific skills, to which we now turn.

Attention sub-functions as concurrent and longitudinal predictors of literacy and numeracy

 As we anticipated, individual differences in executive attention predicted concurrent

abilities across domains (e.g., cardinality understanding, non-verbal addition and subtraction,

letter and vocabulary knowledge), over and above age and non-verbal ability. These findings

are consistent with the growing number of studies investigating executive control in

preschoolers and its relationship to developing cognition, either concurrently (Bull et al., 2011)

or longitudinally (Bull et al., 2008; Welsh et al., 2010). The current findings therefore provide a

direct demonstration that cognitive building blocks to early numeracy and literacy depend on

effortful control in early childhood. Of note, scores for this attention sub-function did not

predict phoneme matching ability, which is entirely consistent with the co-existence of both

strong domain-specific and domain-general influences on the development of skills leading to

early reading and language (e.g., Welsh et al., 2010). Our strong domain-specific correlations

(for example, between vocabulary and letter knowledge) also support this co-existence.

However, and contrary to our expectations, the executive attention factor did not significantly

predict longitudinal outcomes for either numeracy or literacy. Multiple reasons could account

for this finding. First and simplest, our executive attention measures may have tapped basic

stimulus response conflict, but may not have been sensitive to more complex aspects of

attentional control (e.g., maintenance of task relevant information, shifting) that overlap with

those executive skills known to be longitudinal predictors of outcome in older children, for

whom these skills are most easily measured. Secondly, limited sample size may have masked

subtle longitudinal effects. A third and also plausible account is that for children over the full

age range between 3 and 6 years of age, rather than a more discrete age group (e.g., 4 ½ year-

olds, Bull et al., 2008), there exist developmental differences in the extent to which executive
attention skills contribute to these outcome measures longitudinally, rather than concurrently.

Such differences may have been masked here. Future studies could address these possibilities

by assessing additional executive attention processes (within the practical constraints posed by

testing 3-year-olds, who already worked amazingly hard to complete the current protocol).