Abstract

KARBACH, Julia. Plasticity of executive functions in childhood and adolescence: Effects of cognitive training interventions. Rev Arg Cs Comp. [online]. 2015, vol.7, n.1, pp.64-70. ISSN 1852-4206.

Executive functions include a set of higher-level cognitive control abilities, such as cognitive flexibility, inhibition, and working memory. They support action control and the flexible adaptation to changing environments. Given that these control functions rely on the prefrontal cortex, they develop rapidly across childhood and adolescence. Importantly, executive control is a strong predictor for various life outcomes, such as academic achievement, socioeconomic status, and physical health. Therefore, numerous training interventions have been designed to improve executive functioning in children and adolescents, both in normally developing individuals and children suffering from neurocognitive and developmental disorders. Despite some encouraging findings revealing that executive control training benefitted untrained task and abilities, such as fluid intelligence and academic performance, recent findings regarding the transferability of training-induced performance improvements to untrained tasks are heterogeneous. This short review aims at providing a selective overview of developmental findings and discussing the effects of different types of executive control training in children and adolescents as well as the potential of cognitive training interventions for the application in clinical and educational contexts.

Keywords : Executive functions; cognitive training; childhood; adolescence; cognitive plasticity.

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