Fig. 1 1. Reaction time and accuracy in the ANT overall performance and in the 

 conflict-related executive network scores as a function of age. The 4.5-year-olds come 

 from a separate study (after Rueda et al., 2004). 



correlated with parent reports of temperamental EC and positively re- 

 lated to the child's rated negative affect. 



The development of executive attention has also been traced into 

 the primary school period (Rueda et al., 2004) using a child version 

 of the ANT. The results of several studies using the ANT are shown 

 in figure 1 1. In this version of the ANT, children judge in which 

 direction a fish is swimming, and fish flankers that surround the 

 target indicate either the same (congruent) or opposite (incongruent) 

 response. Cues prior to the target allow the measurement of all three 

 attentional networks: orienting, alerting, and executive attention, as 

 described in figure 6d. Reaction times for the children were much 

 longer than for adults, but they showed similar independence among 

 the three networks. Rather surprisingly, the ability to resolve conflict 

 on the flanker task, as measured by the ANT, remained about the 

 same from age 7 to adulthood. 



There is considerable evidence that the executive attention net- 

 work is important in many aspects of behavior, including the ac- 

 quisition of school subjects such as literacy, and in a wide variety 

 of other subjects that draw upon general intelligence. Anatomically 

 the network involving resolution of conflict also overlaps with brain 

 areas related to general intelligence (Duncan et al., 2000). Training 

 of attention, either explicitly or implicitly, is also often a part of the 

 school curriculum (Posner and Rothbart, 2007), but additional stud- 



