Games shine a light on how cognitive ability develops
Executive functions are what allow us to plan, organise, set goals, make decisions, solve problems and pay attention. Although these skills are essential to our ability to function independently, we aren’t born with them. Instead, they must be developed – a process that begins when we are children. “Unfortunately, we still know little about how children develop their executive functions,” says Beatriz Gil-Gómez de Liaño, an associate professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid. With the support of the EU-funded FORAGEKID project and in collaboration with Jeremy Wolfe, a professor at BWH-Harvard Medical, and Fernando Maestú, a professor at the Complutense University of Madrid, Gil-Gómez de Liaño is working to help fill this knowledge gap. At the centre of her efforts is foraging – a specific type of visual search task that children often use to, for example, look for Lego pieces to build a structure. “Because foraging involves different executive skills within a single task, it could serve as a means of assessing a child’s overall executive function,” she explains. Gil-Gómez de Liaño’s research was undertaken with the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme.
Integrating foraging tasks into video games
Traditionally, executive function in children has been tested using, among others, standard visual search tasks developed for adults. “From a child’s perspective, these tasks are boring,” she adds. “Instead of accurately assessing a child’s actual executive function, these tasks more often test a child’s patience.” Instead, Gil-Gómez de Liaño decided to take a different approach. “We developed fun, hybrid video games that integrate foraging tasks as a means of testing executive function,” she notes. According to Gil-Gómez de Liaño, one game requires children to search through a cartoon jungle to find well-known toys, while another has players make decisions about different coloured shapes. “The children absolutely love these fun tasks,” she adds. Of course, these video games are about much more than having fun, they are designed to provide researchers with new insights into cognitive development. “These games have given us a rather complete picture of executive functions and how they develop at different ages and levels of cognitive ability,” remarks Gil-Gómez de Liaño. For example, the project confirmed that foraging tasks can help researchers understand typical attentional and control processes, along with decision-making, cognitive flexibility, the use of cognitive strategies, and the working memory process. The games also demonstrated that the executive function in children is much further advanced than previously thought. “The foraging game lets young children use their attentional capabilities in a more adapted way, meaning they are better able to focus on the task at hand,” she says. “This is important because it shows they have the potential to train these functions for use within other contexts.”
Teaching executive functions
The foraging games also have the potential to help teach executive functions. According to Gil-Gómez de Liaño, this could prove particularly beneficial for those children whose executive skills don’t develop naturally, such as those with learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders or autism. “We hope that our findings can be used to build the executive function in these children, while also helping the scientific community better understand the cognitive deficits associated with these developmental disorders,” she concludes.
Keywords
FORAGEKID, gamification, executive function, foraging tasks, cognitive ability, visual search, learning disabilities