Notre Dame Professor Bradley Gibson, whom we interviewed a few months ago (see below) presented the results from his study recently at the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD):

University of Notre Dame Professor and Research Team are First in U.S. to Validate Breakthrough Study on  the Effectiveness of Working Memory Training in Improving Attention Deficits in Children (pdf)

• “Dr. Bradley Gibson, associate professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame, and his colleagues (Gibson, Seroczynski, Gondoli, Braungart-Rieker, & Grundy, 2007)  will share new findings from the first U.S. study on the effectiveness of Cogmed Working Memory Training for improving attention abilities in children with ADHD. The study validates previous research from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute which revealed a fundamental breakthrough in the way attention problems are proactively treated. Gibson will unveil the results of the U.S. study during the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) bi-annual conference in Boston. Cogmed is a pioneer in neurotechnology and a developer of software-based working memory training products.”

Our interview with Notre Dame’s Bradley Gibson

• AF: Tell us about ADD/ ADHD and development trajectories.
• BG: There is a very insightful study by Walter Mischel on pre-schoolers aged 4 and 5. Some of them had a better ability to control their attention and delay gratification (measured as the capacity not to immediately eat a marshmallow but to wait for a larger posterior reward), and those kids were shown, 14 years later, to be happier, have better overall school grades, score around 200 points higher in the SAT, and, when tested, display better executive functioning overall. The study showed that there are individual differences at very young ages-and the important implications from this fact. Now, the part that I consider more exciting is that these differences are not fixed. Training is very important

You can learn more about Cogmed Working Memory Training and RoboMemo.

Other interviews in our Neuroscience Interview Series: 

You can meet the Cogmed team by attending our panel on Brain Fitness at Neurotech Industry Conference, May 17th in San Francisco.