Evidence of substantial development of inhibitory control and sustained attention between 6 and 8 years of age on an unpredictable Go/No-Go task

•Sustained attention improves between 6 and 8 years.•Response inhibition improves between 6 and 8 years.•Measures of attentional control showed ongoing improvement between 6 and 11 years.

Inhibitory control and sustained attention are important cognitive abilities; however, their developmental trajectories remain unclear. In total, 35 6-year-olds, 32 8-year-olds, and 37 10-year-olds performed a Go/No-Go task; this required frequent responding to stimuli with infrequent inhibition to a target that appeared unpredictably. Children performed this task three times over 12 months. Response time variability and accuracy measures, linked to inhibition and sustained attention, were assessed. Specifically, fast Fourier transform and ex-Gaussian analyses of response time data provided several measures of response time variability; these measures are thought to represent different components of sustained attention. The 6-year-olds performed less well than the older groups on most measures. The 8-year-olds exhibited greater momentary fluctuations in response time and made more long responses than the 10-year-olds; otherwise, there were few differences between the two older groups. Response inhibition and sustained attention developed significantly between 6 and 8 years of age, with subtle changes in attentional control between 8 and 11 years of age.