An examination of construct validity of the Shape School in preschool and elementary-age children
by Johnson, Abigail R., M.A., SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY AT CARBONDALE, 2007, 139 pages; 1444419

Abstract:

Executive control is considered to be a set of cognitive processes that guide and regulate thought and behavior, which manifest in daily life through initiation, organization, and planning skills. Executive control has been explored extensively in adults, and recent research has focused on the early development of executive control in young children. However, few measures exist that assess executive control across a wide range of development in both preschool and elementary school age children. The Shape School (Espy, 1997) is a task previously validated to measure executive control in preschoolers. The purpose of the present study is to explore validity of the Shape School in early and late elementary school children. Seventy-one typically developing children in preschool through 6th grade including, 28 preschoolers, 23 early elementary children (1st--3rd grade) and 20 late elementary children (4th to 6th grade), completed a test battery including the Trails-P, the Shape School, and a brief measure of intelligence. One of two Shape School formats, either a storybook format presenting multiple stimuli simultaneously on a page or a computer format presenting stimuli consecutively, was administered to participants. Evidence for validity of the Shape School in elementary aged children was demonstrated by examining response time latency for correct responses between conditions (executive vs. control) by presentation format and by age group. Response time latency was shown to improve across age and in the control conditions over executive conditions. Response time latency also varied within executive conditions such that latency was decreased in the executive conditions requiring suppression of an irrelevant response relative to conditions requiring shifting between two relevant types of responses. Latency was also decreased in conditions requiring processing of a single rule relative to those requiring concurrent processing of multiple rules. Evidence for concurrent validity was observed as performance on Shape School conditions related to executive conditions of another executive control task. Although preschoolers demonstrated some differences in performance between formats, no main effect of presentation format was observed, suggesting that the computer and storybook versions elicit executive control similarly. These results indicate that the Shape School may be a valid tool for assessment of executive control in children from preschool through 6th grade and is unique in its ability to elicit executive control in children across a wide range of development.

 
AdviserKimberly Andrews Espy
SchoolSOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY AT CARBONDALE
SourceMAI/ 45-06, p. , Aug 2007
Source TypeThesis
SubjectsDevelopmental psychology; Clinical psychology
Publication Number1444419
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