The effects of gender and age on inhibition and working memory organization in 14- to 19-year-old adolescents and young adults

This study aimed to investigate how two core dimensions of executive function (EF), inhibition and working memory (WM), were organized during adolescence. A sample of 240 14- to 19-year-old adolescents was assessed with a battery that comprised inhibition (go/no-go, antisaccade and stop signal tasks) and WM tasks (symmetry span, reading span and Mr. Cucumber tasks). A confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the latent structure of EF. The following two models were considered: a one-factor model where WM and inhibitory tasks were clustered together and a two-factor model where all inhibitory tasks were clustered into a separate factor from WM tasks. The two-factor model, in which inhibition and WM emerged as being separate but associated, best fit the data. An invariance analysis across gender revealed different effects of age on male and female EF latent structure, which suggests the existence of gender differences in the maturation of inhibition and WM processes.