The EF Touch Test Battery for the Assessment of Executive Functions in 3-to 5-Year-Old Children. Adaptation and Psychometric Properties of the German Version

Ulitzka, B.; Schmidt, H.; Daseking, M.; Karbach, J.; Gawrilow, C.; Kerner auch Körner, J.

Abstract

The EF Touch Test Battery for the Assessment of Executive Functions in 3- to 5-Year-Old Children. Adaptation and Psychometric Properties of the German VersionAbstract. Children's executive functions (EF) play an important role in their school readiness and academic achievement. Despite the importance of assessing EF at preschool age, there is a lack of a standardized test battery for preschool-aged children in the German-speaking countries. This article investigates the usability of a test battery adapted from English for the German language. We tested the EF Touch (Willoughby & Blair, 2015) in a construction sample of N = 90 children (50 girls; M-age = 3.39 years, SD = 0.78). All tasks of the test battery showed satisfactory to very good internal consistencies (alpha = .51-.93), and most of them correlated significantly with each other (r = .39 - .51). As expected, a one-factor model best fitted the EF data. In addition, there was a significant correlation (r = -.43) with the parent ratings of EF in the BRIEF-P Questionnaire (Daseking & Petermann, 2013). All tasks showed significant age effects. Since the EF Touch has proven to be usable in German, the next step is the collection of a representative norm sample.