The App Magic House:Assessing Updating in Young Children

Several cognitive assessment tools have been developed to measure Executive Functions in pre-schoolers, most of them in an analogical form. Since specifically developed apps would allow the assessment to be more accessible, valid, and fun for young children, "The Magic House" app was implemented. The app offers a simple game to measure updating, one of the Executive Func-tions. A first test was performed involving a small sample of 61-77 months old children. Results show that the internal consistency is acceptable. Non-significant differences related to gender and younger (61-70 months old) and older (71-77 months old) children were found. Furthermore, a comparison with a previous analogical version of the same task was done showing that children performance were better in the analogical version. This may also be due to the difference between actively interacting with virtual objects in a bidimensional world, from playing with real toys.