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Can Stimulus Valence Modulate Task-Switching Ability? A Pilot Study on Primary School Children

Executive functions and emotional processes follow a time-dependent development that reflects the brain’s anatomo-functional maturation. Though the assessment of these cognitive functions is largely examined, in children the role of emotions in the mental set-shifting is still rarely investigated. T...

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Autores principales: D’Aurizio, Giulia, Tempesta, Daniela, Saporito, Gennaro, Pistoia, Francesca, Socci, Valentina, Mandolesi, Laura, Curcio, Giuseppe
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9180860/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35681994
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19116409
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author D’Aurizio, Giulia
Tempesta, Daniela
Saporito, Gennaro
Pistoia, Francesca
Socci, Valentina
Mandolesi, Laura
Curcio, Giuseppe
author_facet D’Aurizio, Giulia
Tempesta, Daniela
Saporito, Gennaro
Pistoia, Francesca
Socci, Valentina
Mandolesi, Laura
Curcio, Giuseppe
author_sort D’Aurizio, Giulia
collection PubMed
description Executive functions and emotional processes follow a time-dependent development that reflects the brain’s anatomo-functional maturation. Though the assessment of these cognitive functions is largely examined, in children the role of emotions in the mental set-shifting is still rarely investigated. The aim of this study was to assess how attention shifting can be modulated by the valence of emotional stimuli. To this end, sixty-two primary school children were tested with a new emotional task-switching paradigm obtained by manipulating the emotional valence and physical features of the stimulus pool. Thus, two tasks were alternatively presented: the Valence task and the Color task. Based on executive performance results, we found a lengthening of response times and a lower accuracy in the emotionally connoted task (Valence task), compared to the neutral task (Color task). The data demonstrate that the processing of emotional stimuli modulates the task-switching performance during development. These findings could help in the implementation of teaching strategies that can promote the development of executive functions and, therefore, functionally improve the overall academic performance of children. Finally, a better understanding of the developmental trajectories of executive functions can help neuropsychologists both in the early diagnosis and treatment of potential executive alterations.
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spelling pubmed-91808602022-06-10 Can Stimulus Valence Modulate Task-Switching Ability? A Pilot Study on Primary School Children D’Aurizio, Giulia Tempesta, Daniela Saporito, Gennaro Pistoia, Francesca Socci, Valentina Mandolesi, Laura Curcio, Giuseppe Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Executive functions and emotional processes follow a time-dependent development that reflects the brain’s anatomo-functional maturation. Though the assessment of these cognitive functions is largely examined, in children the role of emotions in the mental set-shifting is still rarely investigated. The aim of this study was to assess how attention shifting can be modulated by the valence of emotional stimuli. To this end, sixty-two primary school children were tested with a new emotional task-switching paradigm obtained by manipulating the emotional valence and physical features of the stimulus pool. Thus, two tasks were alternatively presented: the Valence task and the Color task. Based on executive performance results, we found a lengthening of response times and a lower accuracy in the emotionally connoted task (Valence task), compared to the neutral task (Color task). The data demonstrate that the processing of emotional stimuli modulates the task-switching performance during development. These findings could help in the implementation of teaching strategies that can promote the development of executive functions and, therefore, functionally improve the overall academic performance of children. Finally, a better understanding of the developmental trajectories of executive functions can help neuropsychologists both in the early diagnosis and treatment of potential executive alterations. MDPI 2022-05-25 /pmc/articles/PMC9180860/ /pubmed/35681994 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19116409 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
D’Aurizio, Giulia
Tempesta, Daniela
Saporito, Gennaro
Pistoia, Francesca
Socci, Valentina
Mandolesi, Laura
Curcio, Giuseppe
Can Stimulus Valence Modulate Task-Switching Ability? A Pilot Study on Primary School Children
title Can Stimulus Valence Modulate Task-Switching Ability? A Pilot Study on Primary School Children
title_full Can Stimulus Valence Modulate Task-Switching Ability? A Pilot Study on Primary School Children
title_fullStr Can Stimulus Valence Modulate Task-Switching Ability? A Pilot Study on Primary School Children
title_full_unstemmed Can Stimulus Valence Modulate Task-Switching Ability? A Pilot Study on Primary School Children
title_short Can Stimulus Valence Modulate Task-Switching Ability? A Pilot Study on Primary School Children
title_sort can stimulus valence modulate task-switching ability? a pilot study on primary school children
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9180860/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35681994
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19116409
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