Current Biology
Volume 21, Issue 18, 27 September 2011, Pages 1543-1547
Journal home page for Current Biology

Report
Training Attentional Control in Infancy

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2011.08.004Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Summary

Several recent studies have reported that cognitive training in adults does not lead to generalized performance improvements [1, 2], whereas many studies with younger participants (children 4 years and older) have reported distal transfer [3, 4]. This is consistent with convergent evidence [5, 6, 7, 8] for greater neural and behavioral plasticity earlier in development. We used gaze-contingent paradigms to train 11-month-old infants on a battery of attentional control tasks. Relative to an active control group, and following only a relatively short training period, posttraining assessments revealed improvements in cognitive control and sustained attention, reduced saccadic reaction times, and reduced latencies to disengage visual attention. Trend changes were also observed in spontaneous looking behavior during free play, but no change was found in working memory. The amount of training correlated with the degree of improvement on some measures. These findings are to our knowledge the first demonstration of distal transfer following attentional control training in infancy. Given the longitudinal relationships identified between early attentional control and learning in academic settings [9, 10], and the causal role that impaired control of attention may play in disrupting learning in several disorders [11, 12, 13, 14], the current results open a number of avenues for future work.

Highlights

► Infants were trained using a battery of gaze-contingent attentional control tasks ► Training led to improved cognitive control, sustained attention, and reduced RTs ► Training resulted in trend changes in looking behavior during free play ► Training had no effect on working memory

Cited by (0)