Abstract
Attention is one of the key competencies, which has to be adequately developed in preschool children to support their good school adaptation and acceptation of school demands. This poster will summarize current approaches to assessment of attention and related cognitive functions in children at preschool and early school years.
The main goal of the poster will be to introduce a new assessment tool, The Coloured Trail Making Test for Children (CTMTC), which could serve as screening of attention and other necessary competencies of children aged 5-7 years. The CTMTC is based on principles of trail making tests.
However, it uses colors and colored patterns that can be processed by preschool children, unable to read and recognize digits. The CTMTC consists of seven progressive tasks and thus apart from attention learning process and use of strategies can be analyzed within the assessment process.
The poster will include main principles of the test, data from standardization (i.e. validity and reliability information), and the use and interpretation of assessment outcomes. The validization sample of the CTMTC involved 287 children, aged 5 - 7, throughout the whole country.
Results proved strong correlations among the CTMTC and three other assessment tools from larger batteries of tests (Woodcock - Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities, IDS and CAS II), which were used to validate the method. However, the outcomes of the tests are also different enough to conclude that each of four methods which were used can be important in the process of attention assessment of preschool children.
Each of these methods can bring valid information about children's cognitive abilities. The reliability was observed via test-retest approach.
The results confirmed high reliability of the CTMTC. The validization study let to normative data for the Coloured Trail Making Test for Children.
It can be used as a screening tool to detect minor difficulties of children's attention or it can help to identify more severe attentional deficits in preschool children.