Abstract
The aim of the thesis was to further investigate the properties of the child Attentional Network Task (ANT), and its use with preschool children (4-5 years), as recent studies have struggled to find consistent results in this age group (Forns et al., 2014; Ishigami & Klein, 2015; Rueda, Checa, & Combita, 2012) . This was done through a within-subjects study ( n = 28), utilizing among others the child ANT, a nonverbal Stroop-task, and parent-report measures of child temperament and behavioral motivation. The child ANT is a computerized experimental task where children are to indicate the direction of swimming fish, guided by different visual cues. The task is thought to measure three separate types of attention; alerting, orienting and cognitive control, and is recommended for use with 4-10 year old children (Rueda et al., 2004) . While inhibition is closely related to several aspects of attention, it is believed to be most closely related to the cognitive control measure (St Clair-Thompson & Gathercole, 2006) . Hence, associations between the ANT and a nonverbal Stroop-task were explored. In addition, performance on the ANT was compared to individual differences in the behavioral inhibition system, as measured through a parent-report scale. Regarding the properties of the task itself, the conclusion remains unclear as to whether the ANT is the optimal way to measure the different types of attention in preschool children. Clear scores were found for the orienting and cognitive control networks, but not for the alerting network. However, the cognitive control aspects of the study were found to be significantly related to inhibitory abilities as measured by the Day/night task. An association was also discovered between children of relatively high accuracy (>70 %) and parent reported behavioral inhibition system activation.