Mate Marote: a cognitive training software designed for large-scale educational interventions

VLADISAUSKAS, MELINA; BELLOLI, LAOUEN; MIGUEL, MARTIN A.; FERNANDEZ SLEZAK, DIEGO; SIGMAN, MARIANO; GOLDIN, ANDREA

Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires

Encuentro; 2nd Latin American Brain Mapping Network Meeting; 2017

Mate Marote is an open source cognitive-training software aimed at children between 4 and 8 years old. It consists of a set of computerized games specifically tailored to train executive functions (EF): a class of processes critical for purposeful, goal-directed behavior, including working memory, planning, flexibility, and cognitive control.In previous studies we showed that less than 7 hours of training elicited transfer to some (but not all) facets of EF. Furthermore, the intervention boosted the academic performance of children living at risk. In fact, our study was the first that used school?s conventional methods for testing EF training.Given that cognitive training leads to improvements in EF, and this positively affects children?s lives, many questions open. One of them relates to the order in which EF are convenient to be trained.Is it better to start training the most basic skills and continue with those that require higher association? Or is it more advantageous to train complex skills first, and then move to the most basic ones? To assess these questions, we work in controlled school environments, involving more than 300 children from different socioeconomic backgrounds attending to several Argentinian Institutions.