title: The effects of inhibitory control training for preschoolers on reasoning ability and neural activity.
abstract: Inhibitory control (including response inhibition and interference control) develops rapidly during the preschool period and is important for early cognitive development. This study aimed to determine the training and transfer effects on response inhibition in young children. Children in the training group (N = 20; 12 boys, mean age 4.87 ± 0.26 years) played "Fruit Ninja" on a tablet computer for 15 min/day, 4 days/week, for 3 weeks. Children in the active control group (N = 20; 10 boys, mean age 4.88 ± 0.20 years) played a coloring game on a tablet computer for 10 min/day, 1-2 days/week, for 3 weeks. Several cognitive tasks (involving inhibitory control, working memory, and fluid intelligence) were used to evaluate the transfer effects, and electroencephalography (EEG) was performed during a go/no-go task. Progress on the trained game was significant, while performance on a reasoning task (Raven's Progressive Matrices) revealed a trend-level improvement from pre- to post-test. EEG indicated that the N2 effect of the go/no-go task was enhanced after training for girls. This study is the first to show that pure response inhibition training can potentially improve reasoning ability. Furthermore, gender differences in the training-induced changes in neural activity were found in preschoolers.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
authors.forename: Qian
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Xinyi
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Department of Educational Psychology, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany.
authors.forename: Albert
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ziegler
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.|Department of Learning and Philosophy, Aalborg University, Denmark.
authors.forename: Jiannong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Shi
mesh_terms: D058256:Brain Waves / Q000502:physiology; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D000068356:Self-Control / Q000523:psychology*; D012737:Sex Factors; D018910:Video Games / Q000523:psychology