The research team at the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, located in the Mind, Brain, and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC) of the University of Granada (UGR), has been conducting a longitudinal study on the neural bases of attention development in early childhood. The research is led by Dr. Charo Rueda, principal investigator of the projects that have funded this study.
Within the framework of this longitudinal research, the LabNCd team has carried out a study with 87 9-month-old infants. Of this group, 75 returned to the laboratory with their families at 18 months. In this study, the infants performed an experimental task adapted to their age on a tablet. This task (called ECITT, from the English Early Childhood Inhibitory Control Task) was developed by Dr. Karla Holmboe, currently at the University of Bristol (UK), who has collaborated on this research.
The task consists of training them to learn to touch a button marked with a smiley emoticon. When the button is touched, a fun dynamic image appears with a pleasant sound, so the infant easily learns to touch this button. Once the infant shows interest in touching the smiley face button, we present a series of trials in which two buttons appear on the sides of the screen, one with the smiley face and the other empty. This second button has no consequence when touched (nothing happens when touched).
In this context, the experimental manipulation is that the smiley face button appears 75% of the time on the same side (frequent position), developing the infant's tendency to touch that side of the screen. This circumstance provides us with a situation in which we can measure how the infant resolves the trials (25%) in which the smiley face appears in the infrequent position. In these trials, they must pay more attention to inhibit their tendency to respond in the frequent position and notice that the important button is now on the other side. This inhibitory control exercise is an early measure of attention and executive control.
In addition to performing this task, in this study, we recorded the infants' brain activity for a few minutes with a high-density electroencephalography (HD-EEG) system while they were presented with soap bubbles (something they like that calms them). With this type of recording, we can obtain information about the dynamics of brain activation at different frequencies with high temporal precision.
On the one hand, the results showed that at 9 and 18 months, they performed the trials in which the smiley face button appeared on the frequent side more easily (fewer errors), and they made a more significant number of mistakes when it appeared in the infrequent position. This is already significant because this task had not been tested before with infants younger than 10 months, and especially because it indicates the difficulty in inhibiting the predominant tendency to touch the frequent side.
Therefore, the task allows us to measure a cognitive operation linked to attention, executive and inhibitory control in infants and young children. We also observed that at 18 months, there is a better overall performance on the task, both in trials with the relevant button on the frequent side and in the infrequent position. In addition to these performance data, we also found a statistically significant relationship between task performance and the energy of frontal oscillatory brain activity in the Theta (3-5 Hz) and Alpha (6-9 Hz) frequencies. Specifically, those with greater frontal oscillatory activity in these frequencies showed greater ability to shift attention from one position to another to press the correct button in each trial. Our results indicate that this frontal activity measured at 9 months is a variable that significantly contributes to explaining performance on the task at 18 months.
These results allow us to establish early measures of brain activity that can be markers of later cognitive development. Furthermore, they provide a very early measure of the emergence of cognitive control and attention, crucial for other cognitive and behavioral functions such as the establishment of learning and emotional regulation. Developing this skill from an early age positively impacts various areas of cognitive and emotional development, preparing early childhood to face the challenges of learning and daily life.
These results are important both for the early detection of the risk of neurodevelopmental disorders and for the design of early interventions that allow health professionals to design specific programs to improve attention capacity and, ultimately, the academic performance and general cognitive development of young children.
Reference
Rico-Picó, J., Garcia de Soria, M.C., Conejero, A., Moyano, S., Hoyo, A., Ballesteros-Duperon, A., Holmboe, K., & Rueda, M. R. (2025) Oscillatory but not aperiodic frontal brain activity predicts the development of executive control from infancy to toddlerhood. Developmental Science, 28: e13613 https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13613
Contact:
Charo Rueda (@email)