The Long and Winding Road to Real-Life Experiments : Remote Assessment of Executive Functions with Computerized Games-Results from 8 Years of Naturalistic Interventions

Mate Marote is an open-access cognitive training software aimed at children between 4 and 8 years old. It consists of a set of computerized games specifically tailored to train and evaluate Executive Functions (EF), a class of processes critical for purposeful, goal-directed behavior, including working memory, planning, flexibility, and inhibitory control. Since 2008, several studies were performed with this software at children's own schools in interventions supervised in-person by cognitive scientists. After 2015, we incorporated naturalistic, yet controlled, interventions with children's own teachers' help. The platform includes a battery of standardized tests, disguised as games, to assess children's EF. The main question that emerges is whether the results, obtained with these traditional tasks but conducted without the presence of researchers, are comparable to those widely reported in the literature, that were obtained in more supervised settings. In this study, we were able to replicate the expected difficulty and age effects in at least one of the analyzed dependent variables of each employed test. We also report important discrepancies between the expected and the observed response time patterns, specifically for time-constrained tasks. We hereby discuss the benefits and setbacks of a new possible strategy for this type of assessment in naturalistic settings. We conclude that this battery of established EF tasks adapted for its remote usage is appropriate to measure the expected mental processes in naturalistic settings, enriching opportunities to upscale cognitive training interventions at schools. These types of tools can constitute a concerted strategy to bring together educational neuroscience research and real-life practice.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2024

Erschienen:

2024

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:14

Enthalten in:

Brain sciences - 14(2024), 3 vom: 07. März

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Vladisauskas, Melina [VerfasserIn]
Paz, Gabriel O [VerfasserIn]
Nin, Verónica [VerfasserIn]
Guillén, Jesús A [VerfasserIn]
Belloli, Laouen [VerfasserIn]
Delgado, Hernán [VerfasserIn]
Miguel, Martín A [VerfasserIn]
Macario Cabral, Daniela [VerfasserIn]
Shalom, Diego E [VerfasserIn]
Forés, Anna [VerfasserIn]
Carboni, Alejandra [VerfasserIn]
Fernández-Slezak, Diego [VerfasserIn]
Goldin, Andrea P [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Child-ANT
Children
Cognitive training
Corsi blocks
Heart–Flower Stroop task
Journal Article
Schools
ToNI
Tower of London
Transfer
Videogames

Anmerkungen:

Date Revised 30.03.2024

published: Electronic

Citation Status PubMed-not-MEDLINE

doi:

10.3390/brainsci14030262

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM370291867