Planning steps forward in development: in girls earlier than in boys

The development of planning ability in children initially aged four and five was examined longitudinally with a retest-interval of 12 months using the Tower of London task. As expected, problems to solve straightforward without mental look-ahead were mastered by most, even the youngest children. Pro...

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Published inPloS one Vol. 8; no. 11; p. e80772
Main Authors Unterrainer, Josef M, Ruh, Nina, Loosli, Sandra V, Heinze, Katharina, Rahm, Benjamin, Kaller, Christoph P
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Public Library of Science 27.11.2013
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Subjects
Age
Analysis of Variance
Boys
Child
Child Development - physiology
Child, Preschool
Children
Children & youth
Cognition & reasoning
Enrollments
Female
Gender aspects
Gender differences
Girls
Humans
Intelligence
Male
Medical imaging
Memory
Neurology
Performance enhancement
Planning
Prefrontal cortex
Sex
Sex differences
Sex Factors
Sociology
Task Performance and Analysis
Windows (intervals)
Germany
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Summary:The development of planning ability in children initially aged four and five was examined longitudinally with a retest-interval of 12 months using the Tower of London task. As expected, problems to solve straightforward without mental look-ahead were mastered by most, even the youngest children. Problems demanding look-ahead were more difficult and accuracy improved significantly with age and over time. This development was strongly moderated by sex: In contrast to coeval boys, four year old girls showed an impressive performance enhancement at age five, reaching the performance of six year olds, whereas four year old boys lagged behind and caught up with girls at the age of six, the typical age of school enrollment. This sex-specific development of planning was clearly separated from overall intelligence: young boys showed a steeper increase in raw intelligence scores than girls, whereas in the older groups scores developed similarly. The observed sex differences in planning development are evident even within a narrow time window of twelve months and may relate to differences in maturational trajectories for girls and boys in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
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Conceived and designed the experiments: JMU BR CPK. Performed the experiments: NR SVL KH. Analyzed the data: JMU BR. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: CPK. Wrote the paper: JMU BR CPK.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0080772