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In this chapter we discuss the importance of promoting cognitive skills during development. Mental skills are key to learning and socialization and predict success in a wide range of life outcomes. In the past years, a great bulk of research has examined the extent to which cognitive skills can be enhanced through training interventions during development. We present different approaches to training and the results of a sample of studies showing great promise to the goal of promoting children mental capacities. Many studies demonstrate that training cognitive skills, such as working memory, executive attention, and cognitive flexibility, leads to gains in performance of tasks that entail these very same skills (near transfer) and often extend to untrained domains (far transfer). Benefits of training seem to be larger for children with lower initial levels of cognitive skills. Although many questions remain to be answered about individual differences in training susceptibility, neural underpinnings, and generalization of training to life outcomes, we argue about the significance of this research for both school and clinic.

Mindfulness meditation is thought to lead to positive changes in cognitive and affective functioning. However, the mechanisms underlying these changes are not well understood. One reason for this is that so far only very few studies considered the effects of specific meditation practices. We thus investigated the effects of engaging in one specific form of mindfulness meditation for a brief time period on behavioral and neural indicators of inhibitory control and metacognition. Performance on the Go/No-Go task and concurrent neural activity (EEG) was assessed before and after participants engaged in 3 weeks of mindful breath awareness meditation. Compared to a waitlist control group, meditation training enhanced the N2 event-related potential in No-Go trials and the error-related negativity (ERN) after error responses. As these two components reflect conflict and response monitoring, respectively, our results support the notion that mindfulness meditation improves metacognitive processes. The changes in the ERN were correlated with the accumulated amount of meditation time, highlighting the importance of meditation practice. Furthermore, meditation improved a behavioral marker of impulsive responding, indicating the relevance of mindfulness-based approaches for supporting health-related behaviors that are associated with deficits in impulsive control, such as substance abuse or over-eating. This study demonstrated that investigating one particular meditation practice rather than complex mindfulness-based interventions can contribute to a deeper understanding of mindfulness meditation mechanisms.

Version of Record online: 25 October 2018 Interventions including social scaffolding and metacognitive strategies have been used in educational settings to promote cognition. In addition, increasing evidence shows that computerized process-based training enhances cognitive skills. However, no prior studies have examined the effect of combining these two training strategies. The goal of this study was to test the combined effect of metacognitive scaffolding and computer-based training of executive attention in a sample of typically developing preschoolers at the cognitive and brain levels. Compared to children in the regular training protocol and an untrained active control group, children in the metacognitive group showed larger gains on intelligence and significant increases on an electrophysiological index associated with conflict processing. Moreover, changes in the conflict-related brain activity predicted gains in intelligence in the metacognitive scaffolding group. These results suggest that metacognitive scaffolding boosts the influence of process-based training on cognitive efficiency and brain plasticity related to executive attention. Secretaría de Estado de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación, Grant/Award Number: PSI2014-55833-P

Mindfulness meditation is thought to lead to positive changes in cognitive and affective functioning. However, the mechanisms underlying these changes are not well understood. One reason for this is that so far only very few studies considered the effects of specific meditation practices. We thus investigated the effects of engaging in one specific form of mindfulness meditation for a brief time period on behavioral and neural indicators of inhibitory control and metacognition. Performance on the Go/No-Go task and concurrent neural activity (EEG) was assessed before and after participants engaged in 3 weeks of mindful breath awareness meditation. Compared to a waitlist control group, meditation training enhanced the N2 event-related potential in No-Go trials and the error-related negativity (ERN) after error responses. As these two components reflect conflict and response monitoring, respectively, our results support the notion that mindfulness meditation improves metacognitive processes. The changes in the ERN were correlated with the accumulated amount of meditation time, highlighting the importance of meditation practice. Furthermore, meditation improved a behavioral marker of impulsive responding, indicating the relevance of mindfulness-based approaches for supporting health-related behaviors that are associated with deficits in impulsive control, such as substance abuse or over-eating. This study demonstrated that investigating one particular meditation practice rather than complex mindfulness-based interventions can contribute to a deeper understanding of mindfulness meditation mechanisms.

Aspects of activation, selection and control have been related to attention from early to more recent theoretical models. In this review paper, we present information about different levels of analysis of all three aspects involved in this central function of cognition. Studies in the field of Cognitive Psychology have provided information about the cognitive operations associated with each function as well as experimental tasks to measure them. Using these methods, neuroimaging studies have revealed the circuitry and chronometry of brain reactions while individuals perform marker tasks, aside from neuromodulators involved in each network. Information on the anatomy and circuitry of attention is key to research approaching the neural mechanisms involved in individual differences in efficiency, and how they relate to maturational and genetic/environmental influences. Also, understanding the neural mechanisms related to attention networks provides a way to examine the impact of interventions designed to improve attention skills. In the last section of the paper, we emphasize the importance of the neuroscience approach in order to connect cognition and behavior to underpinning biological and molecular mechanisms providing a framework that is informative to many central aspects of cognition, such as development, psychopathology and intervention.

In the present study, we investigated developmental trajectories of alerting, orienting, and executive attention networks and their interactions over childhood. Two cross-sectional experiments were conducted with different samples of 6- to 12-year-old children using modified versions of the attention network task (ANT). In Experiment 1 (N = 106), alerting and orienting cues were independently manipulated, thus allowing examination of interactions between these 2 networks, as well as between them and the executive attention network. In Experiment 2 (N = 159), additional changes were made to the task in order to foster exogenous orienting cues. Results from both studies consistently revealed separate developmental trajectories for each attention network. Children younger than 7 years exhibited stronger benefits from having an alerting auditory signal prior to the target presentation. Developmental changes in orienting were mostly observed on response accuracy between middle and late childhood, whereas executive attention showed increases in efficiency between 7 years and older ages, and further improvements in late childhood. Of importance, across both experiments, significant interactions between alerting and orienting, as well as between each of these and the executive attention network, were observed. Alerting cues led to speeding shifts of attention and enhancing orienting processes. Also, both alerting and orienting cues modulated the magnitude of the flanker interference effect. These findings inform current theoretical models of human attention and its development, characterizing for the first time, the age-related course of attention networks interactions that, present in adults, stem from further refinements over childhood.

Development of self-regulation, the capacity to voluntarily modulate thoughts, emotions and actions is strongly related to the maturation of the dopamine-mediated executive attention network (EAN). The attention control processes associated with the EAN greatly overlap with efficiency of the executive functions and are correlated with measures of effortful control. Regulation of dopamine levels within the EAN, particularly in the basal ganglia is carried out by the action of dopamine transporters. In humans, the SLC6A3/DAT1 gene carries out the synthesis of the DAT protein. The 10-repeat allele has been associated with an enhanced expression of the gene and has been related to ADHD symptoms. Little is known about the impact of DAT1 variations on children's capacity to self-regulate in contexts that impose particular demands of regulatory control such as the school or home. This study defines a multi-domain phenotype of self-regulation and examines whether variations of the DAT1 gene accounts for individual differences in performance in 4–5 year old children. Results show that presence of the 10r allele is related to a diminished ability to exert voluntary regulation of reactivity. These findings shed light on the neurobiological mechanisms underlying individual differences in self-regulation during childhood., This project was funded with grants of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (refs. PSI2011-27746 and PSI2014-55833-P) awarded to MR, as well as a doctoral fellowship awarded to the first author by the General Secretary of Universities, Research and Technology of the Junta of Andalucía (F.P.U. fellowship in the area of psychobiology).

In this chapter we discuss the importance of promoting cognitive skills during development. Mental skills are key to learning and socialization and predict success in a wide range of life outcomes. In the past years, a great bulk of research has examined the extent to which cognitive skills can be enhanced through training interventions during development. We present different approaches to training and the results of a sample of studies showing great promise to the goal of promoting children’s mental capacities. Many studies demonstrate that training cognitive skills, such as working memory, executive attention, and cognitive flexibility, leads to gains in performance of tasks that entail these very same skills (near transfer) and often extend to untrained domains (far transfer). Benefits of training seem to be larger for children with lower initial levels of cognitive skills. Although many questions remain to be answered about individual differences in training susceptibility, neural underpinnings, and generalization of training to life outcomes, we argue about the significance of this research for both school and clinic.