Interestingly, these developmental differences do not appear to cause or reflect large changes in small world network properties. Fair et al. (2009) determined the path length and clustering coefficient for the task control and default mode network regions in children and adults and found no qualitative differences between the two groups. When Supekar et al. (2009) calculated path length and clustering coefficient on a brain wide scale, children and adults did not differ significantly in small world metrics tested at a single matrix threshold. Fransson and colleagues qualitatively observed small-world networks in infants and in adults, but could not perform direct comparisons (Fransson et al. 2010). Taken together, these findings from the handful of available studies suggest that across development, the brains of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults possess a functional network architecture that has demonstrable small world features. This implies that despite substantial organizational differences within the functional network architecture across development, there does not appear to be a gross deficit in efficiency of network organization in the pediatric age range. Rather, the mature organization appears to emerge
