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To Stroop or not to Stroop: Sex‐related differences in brain‐behavior associations during early childhood
Author(s) -
Cuevas Kimberly,
Calkins Susan D.,
Bell Martha Ann
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/psyp.12464
Subject(s) - stroop effect , psychology , electroencephalography , developmental psychology , cognition , neural correlates of consciousness , scalp , executive functions , neuroscience , medicine , anatomy
Executive functions (EFs) are linked with optimal cognitive and social‐emotional development. Despite behavioral evidence of sex differences in early childhood EF, little is known about potential sex differences in corresponding brain‐behavior associations. The present study examined changes in 4‐year‐olds’ 6–9 Hz EEG power in response to increased executive processing demands (i.e., “Stroop‐like” vs. “non‐Stroop” day‐night tasks). Although there were no sex differences in task performance, an examination of multiple scalp electrode sites revealed that boys exhibited more widespread changes in EEG power as compared to girls. Further, multiple regression analyses controlling for maternal education and non‐EF performance indicated that individual differences in boys’ and girls’ EF performance were associated with different frontal neural correlates (i.e., different frontal scalp sites and different measures of EEG power). These data reveal valuable information concerning sex differences in the neural systems underlying executive processing during early childhood.