Inhibitory control gains from higher-order cognitive strategy training.

The present study examined the transfer of higher-order cognitive strategy training to inhibitory control. Middle school students enrolled in a comprehension- and reasoning-focused cognitive strategy training program and passive controls participated. The training program taught students a set of steps for inferring essential gist or themes from materials. Both before and after training or a comparable duration in the case of the passive controls, participants completed a semantically cued Go/No-Go task that was designed to assess the effects of depth of semantic processing on response inhibition and components of event-related potentials (ERP) related to response inhibition. Depth of semantic processing was manipulated by varying the level of semantic categorization required for response selection and inhibition. The SMART-trained group showed inhibitory control gains and changes in fronto-central P3 ERP amplitudes on inhibition trials; whereas, the control group did not. The results provide evidence of the transfer of higher-order cognitive strategy training to inhibitory control and modulation of ERPs associated with semantically cued inhibitory control. The findings are discussed in terms of implications for cognitive strategy training, models of cognitive abilities, and education.

Higher-Order Executive Function in Middle School: Training Teachers to Enhance Cognition in Young Adolescents.

The epoch of adolescent brain development is an ideal time to train complex thinking skills, and middle schools provide an ideal environment to train and foster this acquisition. Unfortunately, few teachers are equipped with enough knowledge of the science of learning and evidence-based methodology, to ensure all students are given sufficient opportunity to develop their cognitive capacity to the fullest. Using our evidenced-based higher-order executive function training program, we trained current teachers to provide cognitive training to their students. The results of this study demonstrate the efficacy of teacher-implemented intervention for immediate improvement in high-level executive function capacities such as gist-reasoning and interpretive statement production. More importantly, we found evidence of far transfer via students' improved academic performance in all standardized test content areas (Reading, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies) when compared to their untrained peers. Our findings support the importance of providing intensive professional development that afford educators with a greater understanding of the brain, how we learn, and the importance of evidence-based programs to advance and instill high-level executive function in all students.

A SPECT study of language and brain reorganization three years after pediatric brain injury.

Using single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), we investigated brain plasticity in children 3 years after sustaining a severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). First, we assessed brain perfusion patterns (i.e., the extent of brain blood flow to regions of the brain) at rest in eight children who suffered severe TBI as compared to perfusion patterns in eight normally developing children. Second, we examined differences in perfusion between children with severe TBI who showed good versus poor recovery in complex discourse skills. Specifically, the children were asked to produce and abstract core meaning for two stories in the form of a lesson. Inconsistent with our predictions, children with severe TBI showed areas of increased perfusion as compared to normally developing controls. Adult studies have shown the reverse pattern with TBI associated with reduced perfusion. With regard to the second aim and consistent with previously identified brain-discourse relations, we found a strong positive association between perfusion in right frontal regions and discourse abstraction abilities, with higher perfusion linked to better discourse outcomes and lower perfusion linked to poorer discourse outcomes. Furthermore, brain-discourse patterns of increased perfusion in left frontal regions were associated with lower discourse abstraction ability. The results are discussed in terms of how brain changes may represent adaptive and maladaptive plasticity. The findings offer direction for future studies of brain plasticity in response to neurocognitive treatments.

Impaired discourse gist and working memory in children after brain injury.

Emerging evidence suggests that a traumatic brain injury (TBI) in childhood may disrupt the ability to abstract the central meaning or gist-based memory from connected language (discourse). The current study adopts a novel approach to elucidate the role of immediate and working memory processes in producing a cohesive and coherent gist-based text in the form of a summary in children with mild and severe TBI as compared to typically developing children, ages 8-14 years at test. Both TBI groups showed decreased performance on a summary production task as well as retrieval of specific content from a long narrative. Working memory on n-back tasks was also impaired in children with severe TBI, whereas immediate memory performance for recall of a simple word list in both TBI groups was comparable to controls. Interestingly, working memory, but not simple immediate memory for a word list, was significantly correlated with summarization ability and ability to recall discourse content.

Discourse plasticity in children after stroke: age at injury and lesion effects.

Studies of children with stroke indicate remarkable recovery of language after some initial delay. However, complex language abilities as measured by discourse (connected language) may be required to detect the full impact of stroke on subsequent cognitive-linguistic development. This study examined discourse ability in children with stroke as compared with orthopedic controls, age-at-injury, and lesion effects. Discourse between two groups of children was compared [stroke (n = 17) vs orthopedic control (n = 17)]. The stroke group was subdivided into early age at stroke (<1 year) and late age at stroke (>1 year). The discourse samples were analyzed along two dimensions: language and information structure. Results revealed that the stroke group performed at significantly lower levels than the orthopedic control group across discourse measures. The most important finding was a poorer outcome for early age at stroke as compared with later age at stroke. These findings alter the widespread belief of optimistic language outcomes after childhood stroke. Interestingly, no site or size-of-lesion effects, common to adult stroke, were identified. These findings identify poor long-term outcome with early brain insults at stages far removed from the onset of injury. The implication is that childhood stroke management should be revised to provide protracted follow-up and treatment.

Enhancing inferential abilities in adolescence: new hope for students in poverty.

The ability to extrapolate essential gist through the analysis and synthesis of information, prediction of potential outcomes, abstraction of ideas, and integration of relationships with world knowledge is critical for higher-order learning. The present study investigated the efficacy of cognitive training to elicit improvements in gist reasoning and fact recall ability in 556 public middle school students (grades seven and eight), vs. a sample of 357 middle school students who served as a comparison group, to determine if changes in gist reasoning and fact recall were demonstrated without cognitive training. The results showed that, in general, cognitive training increased gist reasoning and fact recall abilities in students from families in poverty as well as students from families living above poverty. However, the magnitude of gains in gist reasoning varied as a function of gender and grade level. Our primary findings were that seventh and eighth grade girls and eighth grade boys showed significant increases in gist reasoning after training regardless of socioeconomic status (SES). There were no significant increases in gist reasoning or fact recall ability for the 357 middle school students who served as a comparison group. We postulate that cognitive training in middle school is efficacious for improving gist reasoning ability and fact recall in students from all socioeconomic levels.

Effects of higher-order cognitive strategy training on gist-reasoning and fact-learning in adolescents.

Improving the reasoning skills of adolescents across the United States has become a major concern for educators and scientists who are dedicated to identifying evidence-based protocols to improve student outcome. This small sample randomized, control pilot study sought to determine the efficacy of higher-order cognitive training on gist-reasoning and fact-learning in an inner-city public middle school. The study compared gist-reasoning and fact-learning performances after training in a smaller sample when tested in Spanish, many of the students' native language, versus English. The 54 eighth grade students who participated in this pilot study were enroled in an urban middle school, predominantly from lower socio-economic status families, and were primarily of minority descent. The students were randomized into one of three groups, one that learned cognitive strategies promoting abstraction of meaning, a group that learned rote memory strategies, or a control group to ascertain the impact of each program on gist-reasoning and fact-learning from text-based information. We found that the students who had cognitive strategy instruction that entailed abstraction of meaning significantly improved their gist-reasoning and fact-learning ability. The students who learned rote memory strategies significantly improved their fact-learning scores from a text but not gist-reasoning ability. The control group showed no significant change in either gist-reasoning or fact-learning ability. A trend toward significant improvement in overall reading scores for the group that learned to abstract meaning as well as a significant correlation between gist-reasoning ability and the critical thinking on a state-mandated standardized reading test was also found. There were no significant differences between English and Spanish performance of gist-reasoning and fact-learning. Our findings suggest that teaching higher-order cognitive strategies facilitates gist-reasoning ability and student learning.

Verbal selective learning after traumatic brain injury in children.

Selective learning (SL), the ability to select items to learn from among other items, engages cognitive control, which is purportedly mediated by the frontal cortex and its circuitry. Using incentive-based auditory word recall and expository discourse tasks, we studied the efficiency of SL in children ages 6 to 16 years who had sustained severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) at least 1 year earlier. We hypothesized that SL would be compromised by severe TBI. Results indicated that children with severe TBI performed significantly worse than age-matched typically developing children on word- and discourse-level measures of SL efficiency with no significant group differences in number of items recalled from auditory word lists or declarative facts. We conclude that severe TBI disrupts incentive-based cognitive control processes, possibly due to involvement of frontal neural networks.