ERP time courses of the conflict resolution 



Adults 



6-year-old children 



Trained Untrained 



J y/^ v W^^^ 



200 400 600 800 1000 200 400 600 800 1C 



Fig. 12. (b) Event-related potentials recorded during the ANT from adults, trained 

 six-year-old, and untrained six-year-old control subjects. The dark tracing is from the 

 conflict trials and the light tracing from congruent trials. The trained children show 

 a greater negativity after about 400 milliseconds on incongruent trials, similar to what 

 was found for adults, but untrained children did not show this effect. The electrodes 

 showing the effect in (b) have been localized to the anterior cingulate (after Rueda 

 et al., 2005). 



suggest that training altered the network for the resolution of conflict 

 in the direction of being more like what is found in adults. 



We also found a significantly greater improvement in intelligence 

 in the trained group compared to the control children. This finding 

 suggested that training effects had generalized to a measure of cog- 

 nitive processing that is far removed from the training exercises. We 

 did not observe changes in temperament over the course of the train- 

 ing, but this was expected due to the short time elapsing between 

 assessment sessions. We hope our training method will be evaluated 

 along with other such methods both as possible means of improving 

 attention prior to school and for children diagnosed with ADHD and 



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