Summary: Brain training exercises for children do not significantly improve their cognitive control, academic performance, or delay gratification. Research debunks the effectiveness of such programs, showing no long-term brain changes.
Despite improvements in performance of specific tasks, the benefits did not extend to broader cognitive or behavioral outcomes.
Highlights:
- Brain training exercises did not improve children’s cognitive control or academic achievement.
- The study showed no changes in brain structure or function after training.
- The results suggest focusing on motivational factors rather than cognitive control training.
Source: UCL
Training exercises designed to improve cognitive control in children do not make a significant difference in their ability to delay gratification or their academic performance, nor do they lead to brain changes, according to a new study by researchers from UCL.
The results, published in Natural neuroscienceappear to debunk the popular idea that brain training could improve cognitive control – the mental processes that allow us to set and pursue short- or long-term goals – and thus lead to tangible benefits on other outcomes of real life.
Lead author Professor Nikolaus Steinbeis (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences) said: “Cognitive control is a very important cognitive function that is positively correlated with careful decision-making, academic achievement, good social skills and mental health. Children with good cognitive control are also more likely to have better mental health and outcomes later in life.
“There is a huge and growing industry developing brain training programs purported to improve children’s cognitive control and, therefore, other areas of functioning, and yet the evidence for their effectiveness is patchy.”
For the study, 235 children aged six to 13 completed an eight-week training program designed to train either cognitive control or response speed. Cognitive control training focused on response inhibition (the ability to stop oneself from doing an action that is no longer useful for achieving a goal) and informed by neuroscientific research. They completed a series of playful tasks, often requiring them to inhibit their impulses.
Before and immediately after the study, as well as a year later, the children were also tested for other outcomes known to be linked to cognitive control, including decision-making like delaying gratification, academic achievement, fluidity of reasoning, mental health and creativity.
The researchers found that immediately after completing the training, and a year later, the children improved their performance on the specific tasks they had trained on.
However, these improvements did not carry over to other skills and there were no improvements in any of the associated cognitive or behavioral measures.
The research team also scanned the children’s brains using MRI and found no changes in brain structure or function throughout the brain. The researchers performed additional statistical analysis which provided strong evidence for the absence of any spillover effect.
Professor Steinbeis said: “Our results suggest that although cognitive control is clearly very important for other real-life outcomes, we simply do not see that training can produce such broader benefits, even on a long period of time.
“We should stop thinking of cognitive control as a skill that can be easily strengthened through training exercises, because this is likely a waste of time and resources.
“Although our study only looked at a specific set of training exercises, they were designed in line with the best evidence and improved children’s abilities on the specific tasks themselves. We therefore find it unlikely that other training exercises are more effective in improving real life results.
“Instead, it might be better to focus on how we use our cognitive control in practice. We are more able to focus and learn effectively when we are motivated, so focusing on motivators may be a better way to influence how we use cognitive control to guide our behaviors.
Although the study was conducted only on children, the researchers say their findings would likely apply to adults as well, because children’s brains are more malleable and therefore it would be even more difficult to develop such abilities in adults .
The researchers caution that their study did not include clinical populations or children with learning disabilities. They therefore cannot say whether their results generalize beyond typically developing children.
The study was carried out by researchers from UCL, McGill University, Washington University in St. Louis and Radboud University Medical Centre.
About this news from research on cognitive development
Author: Chris Lane
Source: UCL
Contact: Chris Lane – UCL
Picture: Image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original research: Free access.
“Cognitive control training with domain-general response inhibition does not change children’s brains or behavior” by Nikolaus Steinbeis et al. Natural neuroscience
Abstract
Cognitive control training with domain-general response inhibition does not change children’s brains or behavior
Cognitive control is necessary for organizing thoughts and actions and is essential for the pursuit of long-term goals. Cognitive control in childhood is linked to other domains of cognitive functioning and predicts success and well-being later in life.
In this study, we used a randomized controlled trial to test whether cognitive control could be improved through an 8-week pre-recorded intervention in 235 children aged 6 to 13 years targeting response inhibition and whether this led to changes in multiple behavioral and neural outcomes. compared to response speed training.
We show sustained improvements in closely related measures of cognitive control at 1-year follow-up; however, training had no impact on behavioral outcomes (decision making, academic achievement, mental health, fluid reasoning, and creativity) or neural outcomes (intrinsic and task-dependent brain function and gray matter structure and white). Bayesian analyzes provide strong evidence for the absence of spillover effects.
We conclude that targeted response inhibition training does not make much difference to children’s brains or their behavior.