Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: Melina Vladisauskas | email: m.vladisauskas@gmail.com
Melina Vladisauskas 1°, Verónica Nin 3°, Laouen Belloli 2°, Hernán Delgado-Vivas 3°, Alejandra Carboni 3°, Diego Fernández Slezak 2°, Andrea P. Goldin 1°
1° Laboratorio de Neurociencia – Universidad Torcuato di Tella – CONICET
2° Laboratorio de Inteligencia Artificial Aplicada, FCEyN – CONICET
3° Centro de Investigaciones Básicas en Psicología, UDELAR ANII
Mate Marote is an open source 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 evaulate executive functions (EF): a class of processes critical for purposeful, goal-directed behavior, including working memory, planning, flexibility, and cognitive control. During the last ten years several studies were performed using this software to measure and train children EF at their own schools in supervised interventions. Since 2015, we have started to conduct unsupervised, but controlled, interventions with childrens own teachers help. In this study we show that children EF performance obtained in unsupervised interventions is mostly comparable to the data collected in the testing phase of supervised settings, at least for 2 of the 5 tests included in the analysis. For this cognitive evaluations we performed mixed models analysis and were able to replicate in unsupervised interventions the difficulty effects, an age effect and a socioeconomic status effect that were previously observed in supervised interventions. Further studies with a greater sample size are required to understand whether the other 3 tests can be used to measure EFs in unsupervised interventions.