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Abstract
The ability to extrapolate essential gist through the analysis and synthesis of information, prediction of potential outcomes, abstraction of ideas, and integration of relationships with world knowledge is critical for higher-order learning. The present study investigated the efficacy of cognitive training to elicit improvements in gist reasoning and fact recall ability in 556 public middle school students (grades seven and eight), vs. a sample of 357 middle school students who served as a comparison group, to determine if changes in gist reasoning and fact recall were demonstrated without cognitive training. The results showed that, in general, cognitive training increased gist reasoning and fact recall abilities in students from families in poverty as well as students from families living above poverty. However, the magnitude of gains in gist reasoning varied as a function of gender and grade level. Our primary findings were that seventh and eighth grade girls and eighth grade boys showed significant increases in gist reasoning after training regardless of socioeconomic status (SES). There were no significant increases in gist reasoning or fact recall ability for the 357 middle school students who served as a comparison group. We postulate that cognitive training in middle school is efficacious for improving gist reasoning ability and fact recall in students from all socioeconomic levels.
Highlights
The ability to extrapolate essential gist through the analysis and synthesis of information, prediction of potential outcomes, abstraction of ideas, and integration of relationships with world knowledge is critical for higher-order learning
The students who were not living in poverty had significantly higher mean gist reasoning ability at baseline than students living in poverty (F(1,548) = 4.98, p = 0.026, d = [0.19, 0.23]); in addition, eighth grade students outperformed seventh grade students (F(1,548) = 6.72, p = 0.010, d = [0.22, 0.27], see Figure 1)
Mean gist reasoning scores significantly improved after cognitive training across the set of gender, socioeconomic status (SES), and grade-level combinations, (F(2,548) = 58.28, p < 0.0001; d = 0.479), in spite of the differences found in baseline scores across SES, grade, and gender
Summary
The ability to extrapolate essential gist through the analysis and synthesis of information, prediction of potential outcomes, abstraction of ideas, and integration of relationships with world knowledge is critical for higher-order learning. They strive to cope with the increased demands of advanced and more complex curricula Their ability to make sense of and abstract meanings from information encountered through inferential processing is foundational to academic achievement (Brown and Day, 1983; Bunge et al, 2005; Chapman et al, 2006; Bunge and Wright, 2007). Verbatim processing provides representations of the explicit facts or concrete details Whereas both gist and verbatim memory capacities generally have been found to increase with development, gist-based processing follows a more protracted trajectory (e.g., Brainerd et al, 1998). The complex frontal neural connections support higher-order cognitive functions such as problem-solving, decision-making, reasoning, judgment, and planning, and are often referred to as “executive control functions” (Sowell et al, 1999; Bunge et al, 2005; Bunge and Wright, 2007; Yurgelun-Todd, 2007)
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