Abstract
The Day-Night task is a widely-utilized valid measure of cognitive control that predicts later academic achievement and links to other EF assessments in childhood (Wolfe & Bell, 2004). The Day-Night Task presents children cards with sun and moon images. First, there is a block of congruent trials in which children say "day" or "night" when shown a sun or moon, respectively. Then, a block of incongruent trials, in which children exert cognitive control and say "day" when shown a moon and "night" when shown a sun (Gerstadt, Hong, & Diamond, 1994). However, the manual nature of the Day-Night Task presents an obstacle with more data being collected remotely-thus digital assessments need to be validated. This study employed a digital version of the Day-Night task with automatized data collection with stimuli, card dimensions, and directions identical to the original task with children ages 4-5 (n=57;M=4.83±.37 years). Adult ratings of cognitive control (BRIEF clinical assessment) and connectivity using fNIRS in the prefrontal cortex (PFC)–a brain region known to be associated with Day-Night performance–were also collected. Digital Day-Night was found to have 1) high construct validity: children exhibited significantly lower accuracy in incongruent trials compared to congruent trials and 2) high criterion validity: findings reveal a positive association between children's Day-Night performance with BRIEF scores (r=.56) and PFC connectivity (r=.66). This study provides novel methodological insights for developmental researchers into the validity of digitizing a hardcopy Stroop-like cognitive control task in young childhood.