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404 EDUCATIONAL INTERVENTIONSFigure 18-1 A schematic of the Child ANT. The various network scores are obtained asfollows. Alert: No Cue RT–Double Cue RT; Orient: Central Cue RT–Spatial Cue RT;Executive Attention (conflict): Incongruent RT–Congruent RT. The top box displays thetwo types of target. The middle shows the time line of events in each trial starting with acue, then a target and feedback following the target. The four types of cue conditions areshown in the bottom box (after Rueda et al., 2004a).age 7 to adulthood. The development of conflict resolution is illustrated in table18-2. Alerting scores showed some improvement up to age 10 and continueddevelopment between age 10 and adulthood. Finally, the orienting score wassimilar to adult levels even at the youngest age studied.Executive Attention, Temperament,and Externalizing Behavior ProblemsParents can report on the ability of their children to self-regulate behavior usingmeasures such as the Child Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ; Rothbart, Ahadi, Hershey,& Fisher, 2001). Their answers can be summarized in a higher-order factor calledeffortful control, which is defined as the ability to inhibit a dominant response toperform a subdominant response, to detect errors, and to engage in planning(Rothbart & Rueda, 2005). We have repeatedly found that executive attention, asmeasured in cognitive conflict tasks such as the ANT, is correlated with effortfulcontrol throughout childhood (Berger, Jones, Rothbart, & Posner, 2000; Chang& Burns, 2005; Gerardi-Caulton, 2000). On the basis of this evidence, we haveargued that the executive attention network provides the biological basis for selfregulationof thoughts and behavior (Rueda, Posner & Rothbart, 2004b).