Neurocognitive mechanisms of inhibitory control training and transfer effects in children

Project Information

DEVBRAINTRAIN

Grant agreement ID: 715282

DOI

10.3030/715282

Project closed

EC signature date 27 June 2017

Start date 1 September 2017

End date 30 September 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 500 000,00

EU contribution

€ 1 500 000,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - DEVBRAINTRAIN (Neurocognitive mechanisms of inhibitory control training and transfer effects in children)

Reporting period: 2022-03-01 to 2023-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Cognitive control refers to the ability to control behavioural impulses and is critical for cognitive
development. It has been traditionally thought of as a stable trait across the lifespan but recent insights from
cognitive neuroscience show prolonged changes in brain regions that support cognitive control indicating
greater malleability than previously believed. Because childhood cognitive control predicts well-being later
in life this suggests exciting opportunities for its enhancement. The main question this project addresses is whether
cognitive control can be improved through targeted interventions in children and to see whether such improvements
lead to changes in other domains. Cognitive control has long been touted as core to healthy and positive child
development and much time and money has been spent on seeing whether this can be positively changed for
extended periods of time. The quality of evidence however has been poor. Leveraging state of the art
cognitive and neural assessments in a large population of children aged 6-13 years and testing whether an
intervention following best-practice recommendations works is crucial, as a positive finding would mean that this
could be rolled out for sectors where this is deemed relevant (i.e. education and mental health),
while a null finding is equally informative given sample size and study design, as this can put speculation to rest
and allow dedication of time and money elsewhere. The overall objectives were thus twofold, to see if cognitive
control can be improved in typically developing children and to see if these improvements translate onto other outcomes
relevant for everyday functioning, such as decision-making, attainment, mental health, creativity, fluid reasoning and
their structural and functional neural underpinnings.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

This project achieved its aims in that we were able to recruit a large sample of children (N = 265; 6-13 years) to take part in an 8-week training regime of either cognitive control or response speed, and an extensive battery of behavioral and neural assessments before and after the training as well as at 1-year follow-up. The sample was only 10% less than what had been originally proposed, most likely due to Covid-19 and associated restrictions taking place during the recruitment and testing phase. Pivoting to online testing allowed for retention of already recruited participants as well as recruiting a small number of additional participants. With the baseline data we were able to study a range of questions and looked at age-related changes in specific outcome measures that were designed to probe cognitive control (Thompson & Steinbeis, 2020; Smid et al., 2023a, 2023b; Ganesan & Steinbeis, 2021). Crucially, we were able to test whether our training led to any changes across our comprehensive battery of outcome measures. We found that with exception of very closely related tasks, there was no specific effect of cognitive control training on any behavioral or neural outcome measures either immediately or one year after training. Bayesian tests provided overwhelming evidence in support of absent training effects (Ganesan et al., 2024). We did find some specific effects of training on variability in the trained cognitive processes for each group (Canigueral et al., 2023). This work has spawned a host of theoretical papers advocating for a shift away from attempts to train cognitive capacity towards targeting meta-level components of when to engage in cognitive control (Ganesan & Steinbeis, 2021; Steinbeis, 2023).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Our findings go beyond the state of the art by providing the best and comprehensive evidence available to date to arbitrate in a debate that has been held for decades and let to the expenditure of vast amounts of time and money. By providing evidence of absence in a highly powered and optimal research design, these findings should have major ramifications for the research community as well as associated sectors hoping to from our research, such as educators and mental health practicioners, in that interventions that aim for a wholesale increase of cognitive control capacity are unlikely to be effective.

Study Design