Impact of an Individualized Cognitive Training Intervention in Preschoolers from Poor Homes.

Federico Giovannetti,Marcos Luis Pietto,María Soledad Segretín,Sebastián Javier Lipina

doi:10.3390/ijerph17082912

Abstract

Over the last few decades, different interventions were shown to be effective in changing cognitive performance in preschoolers from poor homes undertaking tasks with executive demands. However, this evidence also showed that not all children included in the intervention groups equally increased their performance levels, which could be related to individual and contextual variability. The present study aimed to explore the impact of a computerized cognitive training intervention with lab-based tasks in preschoolers from Unsatisfied Basic Needs (UBN) homes under the consideration of their baseline performance. In the context of a randomized controlled trial design, different interventions were administered to children according to their baseline performance in a variety of cognitive tasks (i.e., executive attention, inhibitory control, working memory, and planning demands). The results showed different patterns of impact on performance depending on the experimental group, supporting the importance of considering individual and contextual differences in the design of interventions aimed at optimizing executive functions in poverty-impacted sample populations in early stages of development.

Highlights

The present study aimed to explore the impact of a computerized cognitive training intervention with lab-based tasks in preschoolers from Unsatisfied Basic Needs (UBN) homes, under the consideration ofPublic theirHealth baseline performance
The results showed that the impact of the intervention followed distinct patterns for each performance and experimental group according to the cognitive task
The results showed that when analyzing children only by the experimental condition, the INT group benefited from the intervention; even when the CON group showed improvement, the INT group showed a greater effect

Summary

Introduction

Executive Functions and Cognitive Interventions in Poverty Executive processes, such as attention, inhibitory control, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and planning, can be defined as a complex set of abilities involved in the regulation of emotions, thoughts, and behaviors during an objective-oriented action, such as those involved in learning contexts [1,2]. Attention, inhibitory control, working memory, and flexibility processes vary between individuals from a very early stage of development [8,9,10,11]. The perspective of the Relational Developmental Systems (RDS) conceptualizes these individual differences in a complex way, in which development implies bidirectional and interdependent associations between events at different levels of organization (i.e., genetic, epigenetic, cellular, neural, cognitive, behavioral, and contextual) [12].

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