Review Article
Early Development of Executive Attention
Conejero A and Rueda MR*Department of Experimental Psychology & Center for Research on Mind, Brain and Behavior (CIMCYC), Universidad de Granada, Spain
- *Corresponding Author:
- Rueda MR
Department of Experimental Psychology & Center for Research on Mind
Brain and Behavior (CIMCYC)
Universidad de Granada, Spain
Tel: +34958249609
E-mail: rorueda@ugr.es
Received Date: Apr 04, 2017; Accepted Date: Apr 20, 2017; Published Date: Apr 27, 2017
Citation: Conejero A, Rueda MR (2017) Early Development of Executive Attention. J Child Adolesc Behav 5: 341. doi: 10.4172/2375-4494.1000341
Copyright: © 2017 Conejero A, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Executive attention (EA) encompasses a variety of attention mechanisms implicated in the control of thoughts and behavior. The emergence of EA skills depends on the maturation of frontal brain structures. Evidence in the past years has shown that frontal brain structures related to EA are already functional in the first months of life and first signs of EA can be observed by the second half of the first year of life. Given the importance of EA to a wide range of developmental outcomes (e.g. academic and professional outcomes, socialization, psychological wellbeing, etc.), understanding early stages of development is of great interest for the promotion of EA and the prevention of EA-related deficits over the course of development. Despite its relevance, relatively little is known about the development of EA before the preschool years. This paper aims at providing a selective review of the existing literature about the early development of EA. We present the principal measures of EA for infants and toddlers available to date. We also review main findings on behavioral as well as brain mechanisms of EA in infancy and toddlerhood. Finally, we summarize research on early indicators of EA and its implication for the early detection of some developmental disorders.
