Training van werkgeheugen en inhibitie bij kinderen en adolescenten met obesitas

Obesitas bij kinderen is de afgelopen decennia sterk toegenomen. Er is een aantal redenen om te interveniëren bij obesitas op de kinderleeftijd. Cardiovasculaire risicofactoren komen bij ernstige obese kinderen veel vaker voor dan bij kinderen zonder gewichtsproblemen en obesitas op de kinderleeftijd vergroot het risico op cardiovasculaire morbiditeit en mortaliteit op volwassen leeftijd1. Bovendien zijn de psychosociale gevolgen van obesitas vaak aanzienlijk en hinderen ze het kind in zijn ontwikkeling2. Preventie en behandeling zijn vereist, maar de resultaten zijn wisselend en eerder zwak met een grote kans op terugval

Digital games, cognitive skills, and motivation: : children’s perception in the school context

In addition to entertainment, games have been recognized as enhancers of cognition and associated with increased motivation in the school learning context. The possibility of immersion and active player participation is considered a distinguished aspects of game design. Therefore, this study proposed the application of Brain School’s digital games using tablets during a school year, with weekly interventions of 50 minutes in a class of the second year of elementary school. Twenty-five students were analyzed with an average of eight years old. At the end of the interventions, the evaluation was carried out through individual interviews. The results revealed that most of children felt motivated to participate in the games activities. However, there was no association between level of motivation and cognitive skills investigated (attention and problem solving), nor between preferred games and cognitive skills trained. However, qualitative data showed that children liked using games and acknowledged that the activity contributed with the exercise of their abilities. In general, this research contributed to reinforcing the importance of the diversification of methodological strategies which include the use of digital games in education

The effect of memory training on interpretation performance

Interpreting is regarded as a useful communication device when two persons (A and B) who do not speak each other’s language, want to exchange information through spoken language. The technique involves the help of a third person, a go-between or interpreter, who speaks and understands both languages. Speaker A produces a stretch of speech, which the interpreter then summarizes and translates into language B. Speaker B’s response is then translated by the interpreter into language A, and so on. Interpreting can take place in parallel with the input speech in either language A or B (simultaneous interpreting) or consecutively, i.e. in between turns taken by speakers A and B. In either case, the interpreter’s task is highly demanding; it takes years of intensive training to become a skilled interpreter. Interpreting studies have been set up to provide a model of the interpreting mechanism, which in turn may be used to set up and improve training programs for student interpreters. When interpreting, the interpreter has to keep (a semantic representation of) the input speech in memory, while formulating the equivalent as a suitable output in the source language. Working memory, therefore, is an essential resource in the interpreting process but it has long been ignored by interpreting programs. Our paper presents a theoretical overview of the concept of working memory and how it may contribute to the quality of (simultaneous or consecutive) interpreting. There are some special methods to train memory which are generally accepted. However, few curriculum developers talk about memory training for interpreter trainees in academic institutions. Specific functions of working memory in the interpreting process are to (i) retain source language, (ii) compute the meaning (i.e. to understand) of the source language and (iii) encode (as well as possible) the same meaning in the target language. We will review and discuss methods to train memory for interpreter trainees specifically targeting the three aspects identified above. Our conclusion is that memory (sub)skills in interpreting could be acquired by interpreter trainees through effectively designed exercises. With a well-trained working memory, interpreters can actually be equipped with an effective tool for the encoding and decoding of information. It is suggested, therefore, that academic settings for future interpreter training include memory training in their curriculum.Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic

The effects of gamelike features and test location on cognitive test performance and participant enjoyment

ArticleComputerised cognitive assessments are a vital tool in the behavioural sciences, but participants often view them as effortful and unengaging. One potential solution is to add gamelike elements to these tasks in order to make them more intrinsically enjoyable, and some researchers have posited that a more engaging task might produce higher quality data. This assumption, however, remains largely untested. We investigated the effects of gamelike features and test location on the data and enjoyment ratings from a simple cognitive task. We tested three gamified variants of the Go-No-Go task, delivered both in the laboratory and online. In the first version of the task participants were rewarded with points for performing optimally. The second version of the task was framed as a cowboy shootout. The third version was a standard Go-No-Go task, used as a control condition. We compared reaction time, accuracy and subjective measures of enjoyment and engagement between task variants and study location. We found points to be a highly suitable game mechanic for gamified cognitive testing because they did not disrupt the validity of the data collected but increased participant enjoyment. However, we found no evidence that gamelike features could increase engagement to the point where participant performance improved. We also found that while participants enjoyed the cowboy themed task, the difficulty of categorising the gamelike stimuli adversely affected participant performance, increasing No-Go error rates by 28% compared to the non-game control. Responses collected online vs. in the laboratory had slightly longer reaction times but were otherwise very similar, supporting other findings that online crowdsourcing is an acceptable method of data collection for this type of research.The authors are members of the United Kingdom Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, a UKCRC Public Health Research: Centre of Excellence which receives funding from the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Economic and Social Research Council, Medical Research Council, and the National Institute for Health Research, under the auspices of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration. This work was supported by the Medical Research Council (MC_UU_12013/6) and a PhD studentship to JL funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and Cambridge Cognition Limited. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Can Motivation Normalize Working Memory and Task Persistence in Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder? The Effects of Money and Computer-Gaming

Visual-spatial Working Memory (WM) is the most impaired executive function in children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Some suggest that deficits in executive functioning are caused by motivational deficits. However, there are no studies that investigate the effects of motivation on the visual-spatial WM of children with- and without ADHD. Studies examining this in executive functions other than WM, show inconsistent results. These inconsistencies may be related to differences in the reinforcement used. The effects of different reinforcers on WM performance were investigated in 30 children with ADHD and 31 non-ADHD controls. A visual-spatial WM task was administered in four reinforcement conditions: Feedback-only, 1 euro, 10 euros, and a computer-game version of the task. In the Feedback-only condition, children with ADHD performed worse on the WM measure than controls. Although incentives significantly improved the WM performance of children with ADHD, even the strongest incentives (10 euros and Gaming) were unable to normalize their performance. Feedback-only provided sufficient reinforcement for controls to reach optimal performance, while children with ADHD required extra reinforcement. Only children with ADHD showed a decrease in performance over time. Importantly, the strongest incentives (10 euros and Gaming) normalized persistence of performance in these children, whereas 1 euro had no such effect. Both executive and motivational deficits give rise to visual-spatial WM deficits in ADHD. Problems with task-persistence in ADHD result from motivational deficits. In ADHD-reinforcement studies and clinical practice (e.g., assessment), reinforcement intensity can be a confounding factor and should be taken into account. Gaming can be a cost-effective way to maximize performance in ADHD