Assessment of cognitive development in adolescents by means of neuropsychological tasks

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Abstract
Development of the frontal lobes of the brain is known to continue through late adolescence, in contrast to the earlier maturation of other cortical regions. Because cortical regions appear to mature at different rates, neuropsychological tests that are differentially sensitive to functioning of specific cortical regions were used to examine developmental trends in cognitive performance. Seventy‐two participants were classified into 3 stages of development: prepubertal, pubertal, and postpubertal. The results demonstrated that performance improved throughout adolescence on 9 of the 11 neuropsychological tasks. The few sex differences that were identified primarily consisted of male participants performing better than female participants on visual‐spatial tasks. Results from the a priori comparisons indicate that the tasks associated with frontal lobe functioning showed more improvement across maturational stages than tasks associated with parietal lobe functioning. Results are discussed in terms of the relation between brain development and cognitive development.