Executive functions (EF) in children can be trained, but it remains unknown whether training-related benefits elicit far transfer to real-life situations. Here, we investigate whether a set of computerized games might yield near and far transfer on an experimental and an active control group of low-SES otherwise typically developing 6-y-olds in a 3-mo pretest-training-posttest design that was ecologically deployed (at school). The intervention elicits transfer to some (but not all) facets of executive function. These changes cascade to real-world measures of school performance. The intervention equalizes academic outcomes across children who regularly attend school and those who do not because of social and familiar circumstances.cognitive training intervention | school grades | Attention Network Test | school attendance | working memory T he efficacy of cognitive training is controversial and constitutes a current challenge for educational neuroscience research (1-4). Although it has been well documented that directed interventions in children can change specific cognitive functions (5-8), it is unknown whether those translate to broader contexts and real-world situations of educational pertinence. Cognitive training has largely focused on executive functions (EF) (6-8), a class of processes critical for purposeful, goal-directed behavior, including working memory (WM), planning, and cognitive control (6). Research has shown that EF capabilities can be improved with practice and gaming interventions (5-7, 9). These results are particularly promising because EF are critical for educational success (10-12) and for mental and physical health (5, 13); furthermore, early self-regulation is indicative of an individual's health and social behavior as an adult (14,15).Because the degree of self-regulation elicited by a child can predict real-life outcomes, it is presumed that an intervention that improves EF should affect a child educational success. However, this hypothesis has never been explicitly examined based on school grades as real-world measurements of educational achievement (16). Instead, current evidence (7, 9, 17, 18) derives from laboratory measures related to school performance (for instance, the time it takes for a child to read a word). Because school performance results from an intertwined process integrating EF with temperament, socioeconomic status (SES), and cognitive skills (19-22) among other environmental factors, examining the direct outcome of an intervention on school grades is necessary to assure its practical pertinence.Our main hypothesis is that a gaming intervention in schoolage children tuned to improve aspects of EF should transfer to real-world manifestations of school performance indexed by children's grades.In the educational system of the City of Buenos Aires, first graders devote an important amount of their school time to language and math. Grading for these subjects is largely based on objective tasks and they are examined extensively. Instead, other subjects (such as foreign la...

Tests of attentional control, working memory, and planning were administered to compare the non-verbal executive control performance of healthy children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. In addition, mediations of several sociodemographic variables, identified in the literature as part of the experience of child poverty, between socioeconomic status and cognitive performance were assessed. Results show: (1) significant differences in performance between groups in most dependent variables analyzed - however, not in all variables associated with attentional control domains; (2) significant indirect effects of literacy activities on working memory and fluid processing domains, as well as computer resources effects on fluid processing; and (3) marginal indirect effects of computer resources on attentional control and working memory domains. These findings extend analysis of the impact of poverty on the development of executive control, through information based on the assessment of combined neurocognitive paradigms and the identification of specific environmental mediators.

Although the study of brain development in non-human animals is an old one, recent imaging methods have allowed non-invasive studies of the gray and white matter of the human brain over the lifespan. Classic animal studies show clearly that impoverished environments reduce cortical gray matter in relation to complex environments and cognitive and imaging studies in humans suggest which networks may be most influenced by poverty. Studies have been clear in showing the plasticity of many brain systems, but whether sensitivity to learning differs over the lifespan and for which networks is still unclear. A major task for current research is a successful integration of these methods to understand how development and learning shape the neural networks underlying achievements in literacy, numeracy, and attention. This paper seeks to foster further integration by reviewing the current state of knowledge relating brain changes to behavior and indicating possible future directions.

P overty remains an urgent crisis worldwide. In the United States, 28.6 million children live in low-income families and 12.7 million children live in poor families. In nations belonging to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 47 million children live below national poverty lines. These fi gures pertain to industrialized countries; rates of child poverty in some developing nations exceed 60%.Poverty and Brain Development During Childhood examines how a range of early social and material deprivations affect structural and functional brain organization and cognitive and socioemotional development postnatally and throughout childhood.• Do conceptual and operational defi nitions of poverty capture the true nature and complexity of the multidimensional problem and properly guide research? • How does poverty affect physical and mental health? • What do contemporary neuroimaging and behavioral studies reveal? Studying these and other equally compelling questions, the authors apply a suite of neuroscientifi c and cognitive frameworks to examine the cognitive performance of children living in poverty in different countries. Looking to the future and to the development of effective policy, the authors analyze the potential contributions of the neuroscientifi c disciplines to the design of early interventions aimed at optimizing the cognitive performance of socioeconomically disadvantaged children. 2009. 184 pages. Hardcover.

The appearance of developmental cognitive neuroscience (DCN) in the socioeconomic status (SES) research arena is hugely transformative, but challenging. We review challenges rooted in the implicit and explicit assumptions informing this newborn field. We provide balanced theoretical alternatives on how hypothesized psychological processes map onto the brain (e.g., problem of localization) and how experimental phenomena at multiple levels of analysis (e.g., behavior, cognition and the brain) could be related. We therefore examine unclear issues regarding the existing perspectives on poverty and their relationships with low SES, the evidence of low-SES adaptive functioning, historical precedents of the “alternate pathways” (neuroplasticity) interpretation of learning disabilities related to low-SES and the notion of deficit, issues of “normativity” and validity in findings of neurocognitive differences between children from different SES, and finally alternative interpretations of the complex relationship between IQ and SES. Particularly, we examine the extent to which the available laboratory results may be interpreted as showing that cognitive performance in low-SES children reflects cognitive and behavioral deficits as a result of growing up in specific environmental or cultural contexts, and how the experimental findings should be interpreted for the design of different types of interventions—particularly those related to educational practices—or translated to the public—especially the media. Although a cautionary tone permeates many studies, still, a potential deficit attribution—i.e., low-SES is associated with cognitive and behavioral developmental deficits—seems almost an inevitable implicit issue with ethical implications. Finally, we sketch the agenda for an ecological DCN, suggesting recommendations to advance the field, specifically, to minimize equivocal divulgation and maximize ethically responsible translation.

The association between socioeconomic status and child cognitive development, and the positive impact of interventions aimed at optimizing cognitive performance, are well-documented. However, few studies have examined how specific socio-environmental factors may moderate the impact of cognitive interventions among poor children. In the present study, we examined how such factors predicted cognitive trajectories during the preschool years, in two samples of children from Argentina, who participated in two cognitive training programs (CTPs) between the years 2002 and 2005: the School Intervention Program (SIP; N = 745) and the Cognitive Training Program (CTP; N = 333). In both programs children were trained weekly for 16 weeks and tested before and after the intervention using a battery of tasks assessing several cognitive control processes (attention, inhibitory control, working memory, flexibility and planning). After applying mixed model analyses, we identified sets of socio-environmental predictors that were associated with higher levels of pre-intervention cognitive control performance and with increased improvement in cognitive control from pre- to post-intervention. Child age, housing conditions, social resources, parental occupation and family composition were associated with performance in specific cognitive domains at baseline. Housing conditions, social resources, parental occupation, family composition, maternal physical health, age, group (intervention/control) and the number of training sessions were related to improvements in specific cognitive skills from pre- to post-training.

At variance with current descriptions stressing the stellate geometry of cortical astrocytes in the brain of adult mammals, GFAP-immunoreactive astrocytes from prefrontal and rostral cingulate cortices in two adult New World monkey species, Cebus apella and Saimiri sciureus, were found to have long cellular processes traversing several cortical lamina. These unreported features of cortical astroglial cells in adult nonhuman primates pose new issues for the understanding of iso- and allocortical organization and processing in higher mammals.

(1) GFAP-IR interlaminar processes develop postnatally, thus typifying a subtype of the classical stellate forms; (2) they bear no obvious direct relationship with radial glia; (3) their development is not contemporary among the various cortical regions. These long cellular processes represent an addition to those already described for other astroglial cell types in the adult mammalian brain (Golgi-Bergmann glia, tanicytes, Muller cells).