Distinct inhibition dimensions differentially account for working memory performance in 5-year-old children

This study aims to investigate the inhibition construct in preschool age children and to examine how diverse inhibition dimensions may affect working memory task performance. A battery of inhibition tasks, two working memory tasks, a short-term memory task and an updating task were administered to 90 typically developing children of five years of age. Exploratory factor analysis yielded two inhibition dimensions: a response inhibition dimension and an interference suppression dimension. Then, a series of two-step hierarchical multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to examine the contribution of these two inhibition dimensions, which were considered as formative indices, on memory tasks while controlling for fluid intelligence. Our results demonstrated that the two inhibition dimensions account differently for memory tasks.