FORAGEKID · Foraging Behavior in children: A new way to understand attentional development
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2018-08-01 → 2021-09-06
- EU contribution
- €257,191
- Participants
- 3
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-GF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Foraging Behavior in children: A new way to understand attentional development
The understanding of human brain development is a crucial challenge for the future of our society: our children. Executive Functions (EF) involve essential processes in our daily life related to selective attention, control, information processing, working memory, and decision-making. The study of visual search and, particularly recently, visual foraging has revealed essential knowledge about EF in adults but has never been applied in children. We have used search foraging tasks in children as a new way to understand cognitive development. At the VAL (BWH-Harvard Med), during the outgoing phase, we have developed a task where a complete set of EF can be assessed within a children-based and enjoyable video game-like task. The innovative and multidisciplinary study is based on theoretical models, behavioral data, and eye-movement recordings. Our first study with a large sample of almost 300 participants from 4 years to young adults using visual search tasks and foraging tasks has shown how we can study different EF processes within visual search in foraging paradigms. Remarkably those related to decision processes of search quitting rules in foraging seem to mature early in development. Also, the results in more real-world environments have shown that optimality for those decisions is roughly similar across the lifespan. Finally, although we could not record neurofunctional measures using magnetoencephalography (MEG) in children because of Covid-19 restrictions in the returning phase, we have been able to develop our foraging games using improved online versions. We have designed new online foraging video games during this last period, and after contacting industry-startup options, our next step is the commercialization of an App-foraging game version to potentially use it in educational and clinical settings. We have started applying them not only in typically developing children but also in children with ADHD.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The understanding of human brain development is a crucial challenge in today’s society. It is fundamental to determineappropriate political and social policies in Education and Health for the future of our society: our children. Specifically,we need to be able to measure and understand how basic cognitive processes, such as the Executive Function (EF),operates in children. Basic research in visual foraging tasks has revealed essential knowledge about EF in adults, but it hasnever been applied in children. In the present project, I will apply for the first time in psychological science an innovativeand multidisciplinary, theoretically-based paradigm to understand and measure EF in children: foraging. The research isbased on theoretical models, behavioral data, eye-movement recordings and neuroimaging (fMRI). At my TC host,Wolfe’s Lab (Harvard), we will create new child-friendly, videogame-based foraging tasks, and I will be trained inforaging and eye-movement data analyses. With my Host at UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID, in Fernando Maestú’s Lab, wewill assess the new tasks to determine their validity and applications to train EF in children by means of behavioral andneuro-functional measures using fMRI. My aim is to advance the theoretical knowledge about EF processes in children,and improve cognitive assessment products. Commercialization of the newly developed tests will be exploited togetherwith the industrial partner, Cambridge Cognition, a company producing cognitive assessment tools. I will be trained in thedifferent steps of preparing a business plan to transfer our product to society. The outcome will be significant for thedevelopment of technology, products, and strategies to meet the needs of the youngest members of our population.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID · MadridCoordinatorSpain
- PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE · CambridgeUnited States
- THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE · CAMBRIDGEUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union