Significance: Executive functions (EF) imply processes critical for purposeful, goal-directed behavior. In children, evidence derived from laboratory measures indicates that training can improve EF. However, this hypothesis has never been explicitly examined based on real-world measures, especially of educational achievement. Here, we investigate whether a set of computerized games might yield transfer on low-socioeconomic status otherwise typically developing 6-y-olds in an intervention deployed at their own school. The games elicit transfer of some EF, which cascades to real-world measures of school performance. More importantly, the intervention equalizes academic outcomes across children who regularly attend school and those who do not because of social and familiar circumstances.

Although the study of brain development in non-human animals is an old one, recent imaging methods have allowed non-invasive studies of the gray and white matter of the human brain over the lifespan. Classic animal studies show clearly that impoverished environments reduce cortical gray matter in relation to complex environments and cognitive and imaging studies in humans suggest which networks may be most influenced by poverty. Studies have been clear in showing the plasticity of many brain systems, but whether sensitivity to learning differs over the lifespan and for which networks is still unclear. A major task for current research is a successful integration of these methods to understand how development and learning shape the neural networks underlying achievements in literacy, numeracy, and attention. This paper seeks to foster further integration by reviewing the current state of knowledge relating brain changes to behavior and indicating possible future directions.

The association between socioeconomic status and child cognitive development, and the positive impact of interventions aimed at optimizing cognitive performance, are well documented. However, few studies have examined how specific socio-environmental factors may moderate the impact of cognitive interventions among poor children. In the present study, we examined how such factors predicted cognitive trajectories during the preschool years, in two samples of children from Argentina, who participated in two cognitive training programs between the years 2002 and 2005: the School Intervention Program (SIP; N=745) and the Cognitive Training Program (CTP; N=333). In both programs children were trained weekly for 16 weeks and tested before and after the intervention using a battery of tasks assessing several cognitive control processes (attention, inhibitory control, working memory, flexibility and planning). After applying mixed model analyses, we identified sets of socio-environmental predictors that were associated with higher levels of pre-intervention cognitive control performance and with increased improvement in cognitive control from pre- to post-intervention. Child age, housing conditions, social resources, parental occupation and family composition were associated with performance in specific cognitive domains at baseline. Housing conditions, social resources, parental occupation, family composition, maternal physical health, age, group (intervention/control) and the number of training sessions were related to improvements in specific cognitive skills from pre- to post-training.