D-034
What Order Should We Train Executive Functions? A Pilot Test Suggests… Any
Martina Boscolo1, Gabriel O. Paz1, Luis Bustamante2, Daniela Macario-Cabral1,2, Diego E. Shalom3,4, María Julia Hermida5, Diego Fernández-Slezak2, Andrea P. Goldin1
  1. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Escuela de Negocios. Centro de Inteligencia Artificial y Neurociencia (CIAN). Laboratorio de Neurociencia. CONICET
  2. Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Departamento de Computación, Laboratorio de Inteligencia Artificial Aplicada (LIAA)
  3. Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Departamento de Física, Buenos Aires 1428, Argentina
  4. CONICET—Universidad de Buenos Aires, Instituto de Física Interdisciplinaria y Aplicada (INFINA), Buenos Aires 1428, Argentina
  5. Universidad Nacional de Hurlingham - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (UNAHUR-CONICET), Villa Tesei, Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Presenting Author:
Martina Boscolo
martiboscolo@gmail.com
Executive functions (EF) are cognitive functions that allow us to control actions and thoughts and adapt to changing environments. They are important for educational and life success and can be improved through cognitive training. For more than fifteen years, our team has implemented Mate Marote, a free access gaming software to train and assess EF in 4-to-8 year-olds. Brief and spaced interventions take place within the classroom, with successful results. There are still open questions about the best way to train them, particularly regarding training order: should basic executive functions be trained first and then move on to more complex ones, or vice versa? We present preliminary results from 23 Spanish aged 6-7 who participated in an intervention consisting of about 13 weekly sessions of 15 minutes each, with evaluations conducted before and after. We used mixed linear regression models to evaluate the effects of the intervention, training order, and other covariates on performance. Overall, we did not find an effect of training order on cognition. We discuss our results in relation to implications for future research interventions, as well as the relevance of the study for the cognitive training field. Key words: cognitive training, intervention, training order.