Development of attentional networks from childhood to adolescence and adulthood

The Attentional Network Test for Interaction and Vigilance is an experimental task which allows assessing the three attentional components (alerting, orienting, executive control) and their interactions simultaneously. This study aimed to evaluate the development of the attentional networks comparing children (N: 17; age 6-10 years), pre-adolescents (N: 53; 11-14 years), adolescents (N: 104; 15-18 years) and young adults (N: 57; 19-24 years). The results showed that reaction times became faster with increasing age. No significant effects for age group were observed for alerting and orienting effects while the Conflict effect significantly changed. Specifically, the attentional conflict resolution improves from children to pre-adolescents after which it remains stable in adolescents and adults. These findings highlight that the tonic alertness (i.e., global reaction times) and the ability to solve conflictual information develops later respect to phasic alerting and orienting systems.