title: Poorer divided attention in children born very preterm can be explained by difficulty with each component task, not the executive requirement to dual-task.
abstract: Children born very preterm (VP, ≤ 32 weeks) exhibit poor performance on tasks of executive functioning. However, it is largely unknown whether this reflects the cumulative impact of non-executive deficits or a separable impairment in executive-level abilities. A dual-task paradigm was used in the current study to differentiate the executive processes involved in performing two simple attention tasks simultaneously. The executive-level contribution to performance was indexed by the within-subject cost incurred to single-task performance under dual-task conditions, termed dual-task cost. The participants included 77 VP children (mean age: 7.17 years) and 74 peer controls (mean age: 7.16 years) who completed Sky Search (selective attention), Score (sustained attention) and Sky Search DT (divided attention) from the Test of Everyday Attention for Children. The divided-attention task requires the simultaneous performance of the selective- and sustained-attention tasks. The VP group exhibited poorer performance on the selective- and divided-attention tasks, and showed a strong trend toward poorer performance on the sustained-attention task. However, there were no significant group differences in dual-task cost. These results suggest a cumulative impact of vulnerable lower-level cognitive processes on dual-tasking or divided attention in VP children, and fail to support the hypothesis that VP children show a separable impairment in executive-level abilities.
authors.affiliation: a Neurocognitive Development Unit, School of Psychology , The University of Western Australia , Perth , Crawley , Australia.
authors.forename: Louise
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Delane
authors.affiliation: b Centre for Neonatal Research and Education, School of Paediatrics and Child Health , The University of Western Australia , Perth , Crawley , Australia.|c Neonatal Clinical Care Unit , King Edward Memorial Hospital, Subiaco , Perth , Subiaco , Australia.
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Campbell
authors.affiliation: a Neurocognitive Development Unit, School of Psychology , The University of Western Australia , Perth , Crawley , Australia.
authors.forename: Donna M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Bayliss
authors.affiliation: d School of Psychology and Exercise Science , Murdoch University , Perth , Murdoch , Australia.
authors.forename: Corinne
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Reid
authors.affiliation: a Neurocognitive Development Unit, School of Psychology , The University of Western Australia , Perth , Crawley , Australia.
authors.forename: Amelia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Stephens
authors.affiliation: b Centre for Neonatal Research and Education, School of Paediatrics and Child Health , The University of Western Australia , Perth , Crawley , Australia.|c Neonatal Clinical Care Unit , King Edward Memorial Hospital, Subiaco , Perth , Subiaco , Australia.
authors.forename: Noel
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: French
authors.affiliation: d School of Psychology and Exercise Science , Murdoch University , Perth , Murdoch , Australia.
authors.forename: Mike
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Anderson
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D002648:Child; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D062071:Infant, Extremely Premature / Q000254:growth & development*; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis
keywords: Very preterm children; attention; cascade model; dual-task; executive function