Abstract

CARREIRO, Luiz Renato Rodrigues et al. Cognitive skills throughout the development: contributions to concentrated attention study. Psicol. teor. prat. [online]. 2015, vol.17, n.2, pp. 153-170. ISSN 1516-3687.

Attention is a multidimensional construct with variations throughout development. In Brazil, there is a lack of instruments with adequate psychometric characteristics to evaluate such differences. This study analyzed the contributions of different papers that used attention by cancelling test (ACT and AC) to evaluate development of attention in a normative sample of children (n = 722) and its comparison to clinical sample with ADHD (n = 46). An ANOVA was performed to evaluate the effect of age on ACT, demonstrating a significant difference for correct numbers of responses and of errors. An ANOVA was performed in the ACT to compare data of 78 children, which also showed significantly higher scores based on age. The same pattern occurred in the comparison of 46 children with attention deficit and hyperactivity. The results show improvement on attentional performance with age progression, besides the possibility to use these instruments for characterization of groups with and without indicators compatible with ADHD.

Keywords : attention; evaluation; development; cognitive abilities; psychometrics.

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