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Scientific article
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English

Children's sense of reality: The development of orbitofrontal reality filtering

Contributors

Liverani, Maria Chiara; Manuel, Aurélie; Nahum, Louis; Guardabassi, Veronica; Tomasetto, Carlo; Schnider, Armin

Published in

Neuropsychology, development, and cognition. Section C, Child neuropsychology, p. 1-14

Publication date

2015

Abstract

Orbitofrontal reality filtering denotes a memory control mechanism necessary to keep thought and behavior in phase with reality. In adults, it is mediated by the orbitofrontal cortex and subcortical connections and its failure induces reality confusion, confabulations, and disorientation. Here we investigated for the first time the development of this mechanism in 83 children from ages 7 to 11 years and 20 adults. We used an adapted version of a continuous recognition task composed of two runs with the same picture set but arranged in different order. The first run measures storage and recognition capacity (item memory), the second run measures reality filtering. We found that accuracy and reaction times in response to all stimulus types of the task improved in parallel across ages. Importantly, at no age was there a notable performance drop in the second run. This means that reality filtering was already efficacious at age 7 and then steadily improved as item memory became stronger. At the age of 11 years, reality filtering dissociated from item memory, similar to the pattern observed in adults. However, performance in 11-year-olds was still inferior as compared to adults. The study shows that reality filtering develops early in childhood and becomes more efficacious as memory capacity increases. For the time being, it remains unresolved, however, whether this function already depends on the orbitofrontal cortex, as it does in adults, or on different brain structures in the developing brains of children.

UNIGE affiliation entities

UNIGE research groups

Citation (ISO format)

LIVERANI, Maria Chiara et al. Children’s sense of reality: The development of orbitofrontal reality filtering. In: Neuropsychology, development, and cognition. Section C, Child neuropsychology, 2015, p. 1–14. doi: 10.1080/09297049.2015.1120861

Main files (1)

Article (Accepted version)

Identifiers

Journal ISSN

0929-7049
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Technical informations

Creation

31/05/2016 09:58:00

First validation

31/05/2016 09:58:00

Update

15/03/2023 00:23:26

Status update

15/03/2023 00:23:26

Last indexation

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