Applying gaze-contingent training within community settings to infants from diverse SES backgrounds
Ballieux, H. and Wass, S.V. and Przemyslaw, T. and Kushnerenko, Elena and Karmiloff-Smith, Annette and Johnson, Mark H. and Moore, D.G. (2016) Applying gaze-contingent training within community settings to infants from diverse SES backgrounds. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 43 , pp. 8-17. ISSN 0193-3973.
Abstract
Even in infancy children from low-SES backgrounds differ in frontal cortex functioning and, by the start of pre-school, they frequently show poor performance on executive functions including attention control. These differences may causally mediate later difficulties in academic learning. Here, we present a study to assess the feasibility of using computerized paradigms to train attention control in infants, delivered weekly over five sessions in early intervention centres for low-SES families. Thirty-three 12-month-old infants were recruited, of whom 23 completed the training. Our results showed the feasibility of repeat-visit cognitive training within community settings. Training-related improvements were found, relative to active controls, on tasks assessing visual sustained attention, saccadic reaction time, and rule learning, whereas trend improvements were found on assessments of short-term memory. No significant improvements were found in task switching. These results warrant further investigation into the potential of this method for targeting ‘at-risk’ infants in community settings.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Keyword(s) / Subject(s): | Cognitive training, Attention training, Early development, Socioeconomic status, Community settings, Infant |
School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences |
Research Centres and Institutes: | Brain and Cognitive Development, Centre for (CBCD) |
Depositing User: | Mark Johnson |
Date Deposited: | 03 Feb 2016 16:17 |
Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 17:21 |
URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/13952 |
Statistics
Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.