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This randomized, controlled study examined the initial efficacy of an executive function training program for children with autism spectrum disorder. Seventy 7- to 11 year-olds with autism spectrum disorder and intelligence quotients ⩾80 were randomly assigned to receive a web-based set of executive function training games combined with in-person metacognition coaching or to a waitlist. Primary outcomes were evaluated for neural responses related to executive function, lab-based executive function behavior, and generalization of executive function skills. Secondary outcomes included measures of social function. Post-testing and analyses were conducted by staff naïve to group assignment. Children exhibited a change in neural response following training relative to the waitlist group [Formula: see text]. Training effects were not detected via lab-based tasks [Formula: see text] or generalized to caregiver-reported executive function skills outside the lab [Formula: see text]. However, the training group demonstrated reduced symptoms of repetitive behavior [Formula: see text] following training. There were no adverse events or attrition from the training group. Findings suggest that brief, targeted computer-based training program accompanied by coaching is feasible and may improve neural responses and repetitive behaviors of school-aged children with autism spectrum disorder. Lay abstract Executive function, which is a set of thinking skills that includes stopping unwanted responses, being flexible, and remembering information needed to solve problems, is a challenge for many children on the autism spectrum. This study tested whether executive function could be improved with a computerized executive function training program under the guidance of a coach who reinforced the use of executive function skills. Seventy children with autism spectrum disorder from age 7 to 11 years of age participated in the study. They were randomly assigned to receive training or to a waiting group. The tests most likely to determine whether the training may be effective were chosen from a larger battery before the study started and included one task measuring brain responses, two measures of executive function in the lab, and a parent questionnaire. Changes in social functioning and repetitive behaviors were also explored. All children assigned to training completed the program and families generally reported the experience was positive. Brain responses of the training group changed following training, but not within the waiting group during a similar time period. Children who received training did not exhibit behavioral changes during the two the lab-based tasks. Parent report on questionnaires indicated that neither group showed a significant change in their broad use of executive function in other settings. Yet, children who received training were reported to have fewer restricted and repetitive behaviors following training. These initial findings suggest that short executive function training activities are feasible and may improve some functioning of school-aged children on the autism spectrum.

Brain function rapidly changes in the first two years of life. In the last decades, resting-state EEG has been widely used to explore those changes. Previous studies have focused on the relative power of the signal in canonical frequency bands (i.e., theta, alpha, beta, gamma). However, EEG power is a mixture of a 1/f-like background power (aperiodic) in combination with narrow peaks that appear over that curve (periodic activity; e.g., alpha peak). Therefore, the relative power may capture both, aperiodic and periodic brain activity, misleading actual periodic changes in infancy. For this reason, we explored the early developmental trajectory of the relative power in the canonical frequency bands from infancy to toddlerhood and compared it to changes in periodic activity in a longitudinal study with three waves of data collection at ages 6, 9, and 16 to 18 months. Finally, we analyzed whether the periodic activity and/or aperiodic components of the EEG contributed to explaining age changes in relative power. We found that relative power and periodic activity trajectories differed in this period in all the frequency bands but alpha, and we replicated an increment of alpha peak frequency. We found that age changes in aperiodic parameters (exponent and offset) depend on the frequency range. More importantly, only alpha relative power was directly related to periodic activity but other frequency bands were predicted also by aperiodic components. This suggests that relative power is capturing the developmental changes of the aperiodic brain activity and, therefore, more fine-grained measures are needed.

Background: Inhibitory control (IC) is the ability to prevent prepotent responses when inappropriate. Longitudinal research on IC development has mainly focused on early childhood and adolescence, while research on IC development in the first years of life is still scarce. To address this gap in the literature, we explored the association between executive attention (EA) and elementary forms of IC in infancy and toddlerhood, with individual differences in IC later at 5 years of age. Method: We conducted a five-wave longitudinal study in which children’s EA and IC (n = 96) were tested at the age of 9 and 16 months and 2, 3, and 5 years. Children performed various age-appropriate EA and IC tasks in each wave, measuring inhibition of attention, endogenous control of attention, inhibition of the response, and conflict inhibition. At 5 years of age, IC was measured with a Go/No-go task while recording event-related potentials. After correlation analyses, structural equation model analyses were performed to predict IC at 5 years of age from EA and early IC measures. Results: The results revealed that EA at 9 months predicted IC measures at 2 years of age. Likewise, measures of IC at 2 years predicted performance on the Go/No-go task at behavioral and neural levels. No direct association was found between EA at 9 months and IC at 5 years of age. We further observed that some EA and IC measures were not associated across time. Conclusion: As we expected, EA skills in infancy and toddlerhood were related to better performance of children on IC tasks, toghether with a more mature inhibition-related brain functioning. Altogether, the results indicate that IC in early childhood could be predicted from EA and IC at 9 months and 2 years of age and suggest that the early emergence of IC relies on the development of particular EA and basic IC skills. However, some discontinuities in the longitudinal development of IC are observed in the first 5 years of life. These findings provide further support for the hierarchical model of IC development, Spanish State Research Agency (grants PSI2017-82670-P and PID2020-113996GB-100), awarded to MR, FPU fellowship (AP2010-3525) awarded to the main author ÁC from the Spanish Government

The control of visual attention is key to learning and has a foundational role in the development of self-regulated behavior. Basic attention control skills emerge early in life and show a protracted development along childhood. Prior research suggests that attentional development is influenced by environmental factors in early and late childhood. Although, much less information is available about the impact of the early environment on emerging endogenous attention skills during infancy. In the current study we aimed to test the impact of parental socioeconomic status (SES) and home environment (chaos) in the emerging control of orienting in a sample of typically-developing infants. A group of 142 (73 female) 6-month-old infants were longitudinally tested at 6, 9 (n = 122; 60 female) and 16–18 (n = 91; 50 female) months of age using the gap-overlap paradigm. Median saccade latency (mdSL) and disengagement failure (DF) were computed as dependent variables for both overlap and gap conditions. Also, composite scores for a Disengagement Cost Index (DCI) and Disengagement Failure Index (DFI) were computed considering mdSL and DF of each condition, respectively. Families reported SES and chaos in the first and last follow-up sessions. Using Linear Mixed Models with Maximum Likelihood estimation (ML) we found a longitudinal decrease in mdSL in the gap but not in the overlap condition, while DF decreased with age independently of the experimental condition. Concerning early environmental factors, an SES index, parental occupation and chaos at 6 months were found to show a negative correlation with DFI at 16–18 months, although in the former case it was only marginally significant. Hierarchical regression models implementing ML showed that both SES and chaos at 6 months significantly predicted a lower DFI at 16–18 months. Results show a longitudinal progression of endogenous orienting between infancy and toddlerhood. With age, an increased endogenous control of orienting is displayed in contexts where visual disengagement is facilitated. Visual orienting involving attention disengagement in contexts of visual competition do not show changes with age. Moreover, these attentional mechanisms of endogenous control seem to be modulated by early experiences of the individual with the environment.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT The data that support the findings for this study are available within the National Database for Autism Research (NDAR) at nda.nih.gov., ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors thank the staff and students who assisted with collecting and scoring these measures and who provided coaching. The authors specially thank the children and families who contributed their time to this study and joined in the effort to better understand the executive function of children on the autism spectrum. Additional protocol information is available at ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT02361762. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award no. R00HD071966. Additional funding to support intervention with the waitlist group was provided by the GoFAR Foundation. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health., Understanding both for whom and how interventions work is a crucial next step in providing personalized care to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Autistic children present with heterogeneity both within core ASD criteria and with respect to co-occurring mental health challenges, which may affect their ability to benefit from intervention. In a secondary data analysis of a randomized control trial evaluating an executive function (EF) training with 70 7- to 11-year-old autistic children, we explored: (1) whether co-occurring attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) features or anxiety features at baseline moderated the extent to which children benefited from the EF training. In other words, we asked, “For whom is training effective?” We also explored: (2) the extent to which changes in a brain-based measure of target engagement predicted the clinical outcomes of the EF training. This is a step towards asking, “How is training effective?” We found that EF training improved behavioral inhibition only for children with clinically significant cooccurring ADHD features. Anxiety features, while prevalent, did not moderate EF training efficacy. Finally, for the EF training group only, there was a significant correlation between pre-to-post change in an EEG-based measure of target engagement, N2 incongruent amplitude during a flanker task, and change in repetitive behaviors, a behavioral outcome that was reported in the parent RCT to have improved with training compared to waitlist control. This study provides preliminary evidence that EF training may differentially affect subgroups of autistic children and that changes at the neural level may precede changes in behavior., Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award no. R00HD071966, GoFAR Foundation

National Research Agency of Spain, Grant/Award Number: PSI2017-82670-P, Everyone knows what paying attention is, yet not everybody knows what this means in cognitive and brain function terms. The attentive state can be defined as a state of optimal activation that allows selecting the sources of information and courses of action in order to optimize our interaction with the environment in accordance with either the saliency of the stimulation or internal goals and intentions. In this article we argue that paying attention consists in tuning the mind with the environment in a conscious and controlled mode in order to enable the strategic and flexible adaptation of responses in accordance with internal motivations and goals. We discuss the anatomy and neural mechanisms involved in attention functions and present a brief overview of the neurocognitive development of this seminal cognitive function on the grounds of self-regulated behavior. This article is categorized under: • Psychology > Attention (BEAB) • Brain Function and Dysfunction (BEAC) • Cognitive Development (BAAD), National Research Agency of Spain PSI2017-82670-P

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.

Objective Spearman's notion of general intelligence (g) denotes the existence of a general mental ability that contributes to successful performance of diverse cognitive tasks. But, what cognitive processes underlie this g factor? Method/Results In this paper, I discuss several pieces of evidence that suggest that general intelligence largely relies on a basic capacity to regulate mental activity according to goals and intentions, allowing for the relatively fast and flexible adaptation to changing conditions, a mechanism prominently associated with the executive control of attention. Conclusion This body of evidence advocates for training attention as a strategy to promote people's mental capital. Some data to this respect show very exciting results, however, additional research is needed before we determine the nature of most effective interventions.

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.

According to the dual mechanism of cognitive control theory, executive processes can be proactive when there is effort to monitor the context and control is implemented from before an imperative event occur, or reactive if control processes only take place after the appearance of the imperative event. During childhood, the coordination of both types of control protractedly evolve from more reactive towards a more proactive.In adults, a relationship between increased use of proactive control and fluid intelligence has been observed. In the current study, we examined whether the dynamics of executive control vary in children who differ in fluid intelligence. We employed the AX–CPT paradigm together with ERP registration to examine behavioral and brain dynamics of proactive and reactive control, including processes of anticipation, conflict monitoring and inhibition. Children with higher fluid intelligence showed better behavioral indices of proactive control, together with increased brain preparation to response cues and increased subsequent inhibition costs when the response was finally not required. This suggests that fluid intelligence in childhood is related to the capacity to implement a more proactive strategy even when executive control is not yet fully developed.

Attention is a state of activation that allows individuals to select the information to be processed with priority and efficacy, as well as to control behaviour in a voluntary and conscious way. The development of attention provides the child with the necessary mechanisms to exert a greater and more effective regulation of thoughts, emotions and actions. Attentional functions undergo an extraordinary development during the preschool years, although the developmental process continues throughout childhood and adolescence. The development of attention is supported by the maturation of frontoparietal brain structures. Research in the field of cognitive neuroscience has recently shown that the function of attention-related neural networks is influenced by both genetic factors and early experiences and education. Understanding cognitive processes and brain mechanisms underlying attention, has the potential to help designing educational strategies that optimize the development of this important capacity and promote children socio-emotional adjustment and their ability to learn at school.

Attention is a state of activation that allows individuals to select the information to be processed with priority and efficacy, as well as to control behaviour in a voluntary and conscious way. The development of attention provides the child with the necessary mechanisms to exert a greater and more effective regulation of thoughts, emotions and actions. Attentional functions undergo an extraordinary development during the preschool years, although the developmental process continues throughout childhood and adolescence. The development of attention is supported by the maturation of frontoparietal brain structures. Research in the field of cognitive neuroscience has recently shown that the function of attention-related neural networks is influenced by both genetic factors and early experiences and education. Understanding cognitive processes and brain mechanisms underlying attention, has the potential to help designing educational strategies that optimize the development of this important capacity and promote children socio-emotional adjustment and their ability to learn at school.

Attention regulation refers to the ability to control attention according to goals and intentions. Disengagement of attention is one of the first mechanisms of attention regulation that emerges in infancy, involving attention control and flexibility. Disengaging attention from emotional stimuli (such as threat-related cues) is of particular interest given its implication for self- regulation. A second mechanism of attention control is the ability to flexibly switch attention according to changing conditions. In our study, we investigated 9 to 12-month-olds' disengagement and flexibility of attention, and examined the contribution of both temperament and socioeconomic status (SES) to individual differences in the emergence of these attention regulation skills at the end of the first year of life. Our results show that both difficulty to disengage from fearful faces and poorer attention flexibility were associated with higher levels of temperamental Negative Affectivity (NA). Additionally, attention flexibility moderated the effect of NA on disengagement from fearful faces. Infants with higher NA and poorer attention flexibility showed the greatest difficulty to disengage. Low SES was also associated with poorer attention flexibility, association that was mediated by infants' NA. These results suggest that attention flexibility together with temperament and environmental factors are key to understand individual differences in attention regulation from threat-related stimuli as early as from infancy. Our findings also stress the importance of interactions between environmental and constitutional factors for understanding individual differences in the emergence of attention regulation., Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO; Ref.: PSI2014-55833-P and PSI2017-82670-P), Ministry of Education and Science, Spain (Ref: AP2010-3525)

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.

Attention has been related to functions of alerting, orienting, and executive control, which are associated with distinct brain networks. This study aimed at understanding the neural mechanisms underlying the development of attention functions during childhood. A total of 46 healthy 4–13-year-old children and 15 adults performed an adapted version of the Attention Network Task (ANT) while brain activation was registered with a high-density EEG system. Performance of the ANT revealed changes in the efficiency of attention networks across ages. While no differences were observed on the alerting score, both orienting and executive attention scores showed a more protracted developmental curve. Further, age-related differences in brain activity were mostly observed in early ERP components. Young children had poorer early processing of warning cues compared to 10–13-year-olds and adults, as shown by an immature auditory-evoked potential complex elicited by warning tones. Also, 4–6-year-olds exhibited a poorer processing of orienting cues as indexed by lack of modulation of the N1. Finally, flanker congruency produced earlier modulation of ERPs amplitude with age. Flanker congruency effects were delayed and more anteriorly distributed for young children, compared to adults who showed a clear modulation of the N2 in fronto-parietal channels. Additionally, interactions among attention networks were examined. Both alerting and orienting conditions modulated the effectiveness of conflict processing by the executive attention network. The Orienting×Executive networks interactions was only observed after about age 7. Results are informative of the neural correlates of the development of attention networks in childhood.

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.

This study examines the role of executive attention on school competence in early adolescence. Twelve-year-old children (N = 37) performed a combined Flanker-Go/No-Go task while their brain activation was registered using electroencephalogram (EEG). Additionally, measures of children regulation, schooling skills, and academic achievement were obtained. We observed that individual differences in executive attention and Effortful Control predict most dimensions of school competence. Also, individual differences in the amplitude of event-related potentials (ERPs) related to interference suppression predict school achievement and some skills important for school. The results are consistent with the role attributed to executive attention in self-regulation.

Research Findings: Part of the attention system of the brain is involved in the control of thoughts, emotions, and behavior. As attentional control develops, children are more able to control cognition and responses flexibly and to adjust their behavior in social interactions better. In this article, we discuss evidence from different levels of analysis (e.g., temperamental, cognitive, and neural) indicating that attentional control plays a central role in several factors related to schooling, including socioemotional adjustment and academic achievement. Connecting behavioral and cognitive levels of analysis with the function of a particular brain network opens the possibility of exploring other factors that might influence the efficiency of this self-regulatory system. Moreover, understanding the processes and factors influencing the development of attentional control has the potential to help parents and teachers in their effort to promote schooling success. Practice or Policy: We also discuss recent ef...

Este escrito es un comentario al articulo publicado por la Dra. Rodrigo en este mismo volumen sobre la conveniencia de incorporar datos de la Neurociencia al esfuerzo por entender cambios evolutivos a nivel cognitivo. En mi opinion, el encuentro que se ha visto reforzado en los ultimos anos entre la Psicologia del Desarrollo y la Neurociencia es extremadamente positivo. Mi postura se basa principalmente en dos argumentos. Por un lado, creo que las medidas de funcionamiento cerebral constituyen una variable dependiente de especial interes para la comprension de procesos psicologicos y su desarrollo a lo largo de la vida. Por otro lado, considero que la toma de datos procedentes de multiples niveles de analisis proporciona una prueba mas robusta para cualquier tipo de teoria cientifica, incluidas las teorias sobre el desarrollo de las capacidades humanas.

Temperament refers to individual differences in two broad aspects of behavior: (1) emotional, motor, and attentional reactivity and (2) self-regulatory processes that modulate such reactivity. These individual differences are grounded in people's constitution and influence both stress reactions and patterns of coping. In this chapter, we examine how individual differences in temperament are conceptually linked to the development of coping and how this association is modulated by the maturation of brain systems underlying temperament. Finally, we argue about the possibility of improving children's coping abilities through intervention programs designed to foster self-regulation.

In this study, self-regulation was investigated in 7- to 10-year-old children using three different measures: (1) parent and child report questionnaires measuring temperamental effortful control, (2) a conflict task assessing efficiency of executive attention, and (3) the mistaken gift paradigm assessing social smiling in response to an undesirable gift. Both efficiency in executive attention and smiling to the undesired gift increased over age. Executive attention was related to both parent-reported temperamental effortful control and smiling, suggesting links between attentional capacities, broad temperament measures, and social situations requiring attentional control.

A neural network underlying attentional control involves the anterior cingulate in addition to lateral prefrontal areas. An important development of this network occurs between 3 and 7 years of age. We have examined the efficiency of attentional networks across age and after 5 days of attention training (experimental group) compared with different types of no training (control groups) in 4-year-old and 6-year-old children. Strong improvement in executive attention and intelligence was found from ages 4 to 6 years. Both 4- and 6-year-olds showed more mature performance after the training than did the control groups. This finding applies to behavioral scores of the executive attention network as measured by the attention network test, event-related potentials recorded from the scalp during attention network test performance, and intelligence test scores. We also documented the role of the temperamental factor of effortful control and the DAT1 gene in individual differences in attention. Overall, our data suggest that the executive attention network appears to develop under strong genetic control, but that it is subject to educational interventions during development.

Recent research in attention has involved three networks of anatomical areas that carry out the functions of orienting, alerting and executive control (including conflict monitoring). There have been extensive cognitive and neuroimaging studies of these networks in adults. We developed an integrated Attention Network Test (ANT) to measure the efficiency of the three networks with adults. We have now adapted this test to study the development of these networks during childhood. The test is a child-friendly version of the flanker task with alerting and orienting cues. We studied the development of the attentional networks in a cross-sectional experiment with four age groups ranging from 6 through 9 (Experiment 1). In a second experiment, we compared children (age 10 years) and adult performance in both child and adults versions of the ANT. Reaction time and accuracy improved at each age interval and positive values were found for the average efficiency of each of the networks. Alertness showed evidence of change up to and beyond age 10, while conflict scores appear stable after age seven and orienting scores do not change in the age range studied. A final experiment with forty 7-year-old children suggested that children like adults showed independence between the three networks under some conditions.

Studies of temperament from early childhood to adulthood have demonstrated inverse relationships between negative affectivity and effortful control. Effortful control is also positively related to the development of conscience and appears as a protective factor in the development of behavior disorders. In this study, the development of attentional mechanisms underlying effortful control was investigated in 2- to 3-year-old children, as indexed by their performance in a) making anticipatory eye movements to ambiguous locations and b) resolving conflict between location and identity in a spatial conflict task. The ability to make anticipatory eye movements to ambiguous locations within a sequence was clearly present at 24 months. By 30 months, children could also successfully perform a spatial conflict task that introduced conflict between identity and location, and at that age, children's success on ambiguous anticipatory eye movements was related to lower interference from conflict in the spatial conflict task. Children's performance on the eye-movement task was correlated with performance and reaction time on spatial tasks, and both were related to aspects of effortful control and negative affect as measured in children's parent-reported temperament.

Regulation of thoughts and behavior requires attention, particularly when there is conflict between alternative responses or when errors are to be prevented or corrected. Conflict monitoring and error processing are functions of the executive attention network, a neurocognitive system that greatly matures during childhood. In this study, we examined the development of brain mechanisms underlying conflict and error processing with event-related potentials (ERPs), and explored the relationship between brain function and individual differences in the ability to self-regulate behavior. Three groups of children aged 4–6, 7–9, and 10–13 years, and a group of adults performed a child-friendly version of the flanker task while ERPs were registered. Marked developmental changes were observed in both conflict processing and brain reactions to errors. After controlling by age, higher self-regulation skills are associated with smaller amplitude of the conflict effect but greater amplitude of the error-related negativity. Additionally, we found that electrophysiological measures of conflict and error monitoring predict individual differences in impulsivity and the capacity to delay gratification. These findings inform of brain mechanisms underlying the development of cognitive control and self-regulation., Research presented in this article was supported by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (ref. PSI2011.27746) to M. Rosario Rueda and a pre-doctoral FPU fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation awarded to the fist author. The research presented in this paper was part of the doctoral dissertation of the first author.

This chapter views attention as an organ system consisting of three brain networks with their own unique anatomy, connectivity, neuromodulators, and functions. These networks underlie the functions of attention including: obtaining and maintaining the alert state, orienting to sensory events, and voluntary control of responses. It traces the development of these attentional networks from infancy to adulthood. All three networks are present in infancy, but their functions and connectivity change in development. The change of control from the orienting to the executive network that takes place between infancy and childhood underlies the increasing role of voluntary control of emotions and thoughts. It examines how genes and environment influence this development and suggests avenues for further understanding of how attention develops.

Functions of attention include achievement and maintenance of a state of alertness, selection of information from sensory input, and regulation of responses when dominant or well-learned behavior is not appropriate. These functions have been associated with activation of separate networks of brain areas. We review the developmental course of the attention networks during infancy and childhood and the neural mechanisms underlying their maturation. Alerting is active early in infancy, although the ability to endogenously maintain the level of alertness develops through late childhood. The capacity to orient attention to external stimulation is also present from quite early in life, and most aspects of orienting related to the control of disengagement and voluntary orientation improve during childhood. Executive attention starts developing by the second half of the first year of life, showing significant maturation during the preschool years. The efficiency of all three functions is subject to important individual differences, which may be partially due to variations in genes related to neurotransmitters that modulate the activation of the attention networks. Additionally, attention can be fostered by training, and attention training has the potential to benefit aspects of behavior central to education and socialization processes. Finally, we discuss changes in attention that occur late in life.

Error detection is one of the functions of the executive attention network, a brain system involved in executive control that includes the anterior cingulate cortex and other prefrontal regions. Despite the key role of this function in a wide range of life outcomes, very limited research has examined the early development of the network and whether its functional efficacy is related to environmental factors. Electrophysiological studies with adults have shown oscillatory activity in theta (4-7 Hz) range arising from medial frontal cortex that follows the detection of self-committed or observed errors. In the current study, we designed a novel experimental procedure that involved a familiarization phase with simple three-pieces puzzles followed by an experimental phase in which toddlers observed the puzzles being formed either correctly or incorrectly. Observation of incorrect configurations produced increased potentials in midline channels and greater power theta activity for both toddlers (n = 56) and adults (n = 14). In addition, socioeconomic status of the family in general, and parental education in particular, contributed to individual differences in the amplitude of the error-related signal and associated theta power in toddlers, indicating that children raised in lower SES families show poorer activation of the executive attention network. These data demonstrate the influence of environmental factors at the earliest stages of development of the executive attention network. Importantly, the results show that error-detection EEG signals can be used as neural markers of the initial development of executive attention, which can be of great help for the early detection of risk for developmental disorders involving deficits in this function.

Executive attention is involved in the regulation of thoughts, emotions and responses. This function experiences major development during preschool years and is associated to a neural network involving the anterior cingulate cortex and prefrontal structures. Recently, there have been some attempts to improve attention and other executive functions through training. In the current study, a group of 5 years old children (n = 37) were assigned to either a training-group who performed ten sessions of computerized training of attention or a non-trained control group. Assessment of performance in a range of tasks, targeting attention, intelligence and regulation of affect was carried out in three occasions: (1) before, (2) after, and (3) two months after completion of training. Also, brain function was examined with a high-density electroencephalogram system. Results demonstrate that trained children activate the executive attention network faster and more efficiently than untrained children, an effect that was still observed two months after without further training. Also, evidence of transfer of attention training to fluid intelligence and, to a lesser degree, to regulation of affect was observed. Results show that efficiency of the brain system underlying self-regulation can be enhanced by experience during development, providing opportunities for curricular improvement.

Children show increasing control of emotions and behavior during their early years. Our studies suggest a shift in control from the brain’s orienting network in infancy to the executive network by the age of 3—4 years. Our longitudinal study indicates that orienting influences both positive and negative affect, as measured by parent report in infancy. At 3—4 years of age, the dominant control of affect rests in a frontal brain network that involves the anterior cingulate gyrus. Connectivity of brain structures also changes from infancy to toddlerhood. Early connectivity of parietal and frontal areas is important in orienting; later connectivity involves midfrontal and anterior cingulate areas related to executive attention and self-regulation.

ABSTR/TCT This chapter emphasizes the manlr methods currently being employed to study brain networks related to attcntion. We seek to sct current studies into a historical background of efforts to understand how the brain selects among stimuli and resolves competing responses. We examine attention as an organ system with netrvorks of neural areas rclatcd to several major functions such as maintaining the alert state, orienting to sensory events and resolving conflict bet$'een responses. We consider the anatomy and circuitry of these networks and examine the rolc of genes and experience in their normal developmcnt and of various pathologies. Finally we examine how our currcnt knorvledge of the psychophysiology of attention illuminates traditional issucs in cognition about how attenlron opcrates. The field of attention is one of thc oldest in psycholog]. At the turn of the twentieth ccntury Titchener (1909) called attention "thc hcart of the psychological enterprisc." Attention is relatively easy to define subjectively as in the classical definition of William James who said: "Everyone knou,s u'hat attention is. It is thc taking possession of the mincl in clear and vivid form of one our of what seem sevcral simultaneous obiects or trains of thought." (James, 1890, p. 403). However, this subjective definition does not prof ide hints that might lead to an understanding of mechanisms of attention that can illuminate its physical basis in terrns ofundcrlying physiological process nor clarify its normal dcvclopment and pathologies. For thcse goals it is useftll to think about attention as an organ system \\,ith its own anatomy and circuitry that develops in early life under the control of genes and experience. This will be the Iocus of our chapter. Thc modern history of attcntion as an organ can be started with the important stuclies of Maruzzi and Magoun (19,+9) on thc reticular activating system. About the same

The aim of the current study was to examine the role of individual differences in neurocognitive and temperamental systems of self-regulation in early adolescents ’ social and academic competence. Measures used in the study included the Attention Network Test, the Early Adolescence Temperament Questionnaire, a peer-reported Social Status Questionnaire, a self-reported measure of Schooling Skills, and information on grades obtained by the students in a variety of school subjects ( n = 69 12-year olds). Results showed that effi ciency of the neurocognitive network of executive attention is related to academic outcomes, particularly in mathematics, as well as to aspects of social adjustment. Temperamental effortful control appears to be a signifi cant predictor of all dimensions of school competence assessed in this study and mediates the relationship between social adjustment and poor schooling outcomes. These data suggest that individual differences in systems of self-regulation are central to understanding processes of learning and social adjustment in the school.

This chapter begins with a review of the anatomy and function of attentional networks, with special emphasis on the executive network, the one most clearly related to self-regulation. It shows that deficits in the executive attention system are a critical part of a number of mental disorders in children and adults. A specific educational intervention is described that improves the executive attention of children. The data provide support for the idea that training of executive attention during its development can improve performance and generalize to cognitive challenges far removed from the training. Attention training moves the underlying network toward adult levels and that differences in genes related to dopamine function might help us choose which children are most likely to benefit from attention training.