The development of Vigilant Attention (VA), the ability to focus and maintain our attention to repetitive and cognitively unchallenging tasks over time, has been investigated for more than a decade. The development of this critical executive function across the lifespan has been characterised by a rapid improvement in VA performance throughout childhood and adolescence, a steady improvement in adulthood and a slow decline in older adulthood. However, the development of the neural correlates of VA in children and adolescents remains poorly understood. Using a cross-sectional design, the present study used a meta-analytically defined VA network in children and adolescents to explore the developmental trend of the resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) within the VA network across two independent cohorts. The results showed a linear and non-linear decrease of rsFC between the left and right VA brain regions across age. However, the results could not be reproduced in the replication cohort, potentially due to a smaller sample size. Based on previous findings from behavioural studies, the present findings suggest that changes in rsFC may underlie a developmental shift in cognitive strategies in neurotypical children and adolescents.

警惕注意力 (VA) 的发展，即随着时间的推移将注意力集中在重复性和认知上没有挑战性的任务上的能力，已经被研究了十多年。这一关键执行功能在整个生命周期中的发展的特点是在整个童年和青春期的 VA 表现迅速改善，成年期稳步改善，成年期缓慢下降。然而，儿童和青少年 VA 的神经相关性的发展仍然知之甚少。本研究使用横断面设计，在儿童和青少年中使用元分析定义的 VA 网络来探索两个独立队列中 VA 网络内静息状态功能连接 (rsFC) 的发展趋势。结果显示，随着年龄的增长，左右 VA 脑区之间的 rsFC 呈线性和非线性下降。然而，结果无法在复制队列中重现，可能是由于样本量较小。基于先前的行为研究结果，目前的研究结果表明，rsFC 的变化可能是神经型儿童和青少年认知策略发展转变的基础。