title: Development of attention functions in 5- to 11-year-old Arab children as measured by the German Test Battery of Attention Performance (KITAP): a pilot study from Syria.
abstract: We administered the German Test-battery of Attention Performance (KITAP) to Arab children living in Syria (N=143, 5-11 years) in order to assess the influence of age and gender on different dimensions of attention. The results demonstrate the validity of cross-cultural application of KITAP with Syrian school-aged children. The influence of age was more evident on speed of performance than on quality of performance, with rapid, general improvement until the age of 9 years. Some attention functions like alertness and inhibitory control seemed to be developed earlier than other functions like, flexibility, distractibility, and divided attention. Gender-related differences were observed in some subtests: Boys had faster reaction times but made more errors than girls. Interestingly, Arab-Syrian children showed better performance on some attention tests compared with German norms. The present study provides support for the use of cross-cultural studies for better understanding of the development of attention in school-aged children.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology-Vocational Rehabilitation, RWTH-Aachen University, Aachen, Germany. jamalso@yahoo.de
authors.forename: Jamal
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sobeh
authors.forename: Will
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Spijkers
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D018912:Arabs; D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D056344:Executive Function; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011930:Reaction Time; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012737:Sex Factors; D013593:Syria; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis