Memory training and attention deficits: interview with Notre Dame’s Bradley Gibson

Pro­fes­sor Bradley Gib­son is an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Psy­chol­o­gy at Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame, and Direc­tor of the Per­cep­tion and Atten­tion Lab there. He is a cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gist with research inter­ests in per­cep­tion, atten­tion, and visu­al cog­ni­tion. Gib­son’s research has been pub­lished in a vari­ety of jour­nals, includ­ing Jour­nal of Exper­i­men­tal Psy­chol­o­gy, Human Per­cep­tion and Per­for­mance, Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence, and Per­cep­tion & Psychophysics.

In 2006 he con­duct­ed the first inde­pen­dent repli­ca­tion study based on the Cogmed Work­ing Mem­o­ry Train­ing pro­gram we dis­cussed with Dr. Torkel Kling­berg.

A local news­pa­per intro­duced some pre­lim­i­nary results of the study Atten­tion, please: Mem­o­ry exer­cis­es reduce symp­toms of ADHD. Some quotes from the articles:

- “The com­put­er game has been shown to reduce ADHD symp­toms in chil­dren in exper­i­ments con­duct­ed in Swe­den, where it was devel­oped, and more recent­ly in a Granger school, where it was test­ed by psy­chol­o­gists from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame.

- Fif­teen stu­dents at Dis­cov­ery Mid­dle School tried RoboMemo dur­ing a five-week peri­od in Feb­ru­ary and March, said lead researcher Brad Gibson

- As a result of that expe­ri­ence, symp­toms of inat­ten­tion and hyper­ac­tiv­i­ty were both reduced, accord­ing to reports by teach­ers and par­ents, Gib­son said.

- Oth­er tests found sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment in “work­ing mem­o­ry”, a short-term mem­o­ry func­tion that’s con­sid­ered key to focus­ing atten­tion and con­trol­ling impulses.

- RoboMem­o­’s effec­tive­ness is not as well estab­lished as med­ica­tions, and it’s a lot more work than pop­ping a pill.

- Gib­son said Notre Dame’s study is con­sid­ered pre­lim­i­nary because it involved a small num­ber of stu­dents. Anoth­er lim­i­ta­tion is that the study did not have a con­trol group of stu­dents receiv­ing a place­bo treatment.

We feel for­tu­nate to inter­view Dr. Gib­son today.

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez (AF): Dr. Gib­son, thanks for being with us. Could you first tell us about your over­all research interests?

Dr. Bradley Gib­son (BG): Thanks for giv­ing me this oppor­tu­ni­ty. My pri­ma­ry research inter­est is Atten­tion and Atten­tion­al con­trol: how we pri­or­i­tize infor­ma­tion in order to process it with­out being over­whelmed by it. This is an exec­u­tive func­tion that helps each of us man­age the ten­sion between the out­side envi­ron­ment and our self-direct­ed pref­er­ences and goals. This is more com­plex than it sounds. For exam­ple, we must learn how to be focused on one task but be able to pay atten­tion to the over­all pic­ture at the same time-you may be aware of Chan­dler’s exper­i­ment on in atten­tion­al blind­ness.

AF: Yes, we post­ed about that exper­i­ment recent­ly. Let’s not talk too much about it, so read­ers can try it them­selves here if they want. Now, tell us about the Atten­tion Lab, we under­stand it is nice­ly multi-disciplinary.

BG: It is. We have 5 grad­u­ate stu­dents, and work togeth­er with Prof. Dawn Gon­do­li, who stud­ies devel­op­ment psy­chol­o­gy and socioe­mo­tion­al devel­op­ment. We want to bridge a num­ber of domains to bet­ter explain the tran­si­tion from child­hood to ado­les­cence. We are inter­est­ed in how kids devel­op cog­ni­tive and exec­u­tive func­tions. ADD/ ADHD is an extreme case where the nor­mal devel­op­ment tra­jec­to­ry does not apply.

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: atten­tion­al con­trol is one of the last cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties to devel­op in nor­mal brain devel­op­ment and, as Prof. Daniel Gopher’s research has shown, can be trained at any age. What we are study­ing is how to help kids that for one rea­son or anoth­er start from a bad devel­op­ment tra­jec­to­ry get into a more pos­i­tive one as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. This is why we con­tact­ed Cogmed to con­duct a small repli­ca­tion study of their Work­ing Mem­o­ry Train­ing pro­gram. We want­ed to see if we can enhance, accel­er­ate, the devel­op­ment of work­ing mem­o­ry and exec­u­tive func­tion­ing.

AF: we could see this as a “snow­ball” effect. If kids are well-equipped to engage in a num­ber of demand­ing activ­i­ties, they will, and will only get bet­ter at them. If they strug­gle with them, they will not par­tic­i­pate, and not “exer­cise” those mus­cles so the gap will only grow. What did the repli­ca­tion study show?

BG: The “snow­ball” metaphor is a good one. The study we con­duct­ed was a small one and we did not have a con­trol group, so it was not as rig­or­ous as the orig­i­nal research con­duct­ed by Dr. King­berg and the Karolin­s­ka Insti­tute. How­ev­er, the results were very pos­i­tive. Even bet­ter than the orig­i­nal results. We saw that Cogmed work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing led to cog­ni­tive improve­ments-increased ver­bal work­ing mem­o­ry and abstract rea­son­ing (mea­sured by Ravens)- and, more impor­tant­ly, to the reduc­tion in ADHD symp­toms as mea­sured both by par­ent and teacher rat­ings. The study has been accept­ed for pre­sen­ta­tion by the Soci­ety for Research in Child Devel­op­ment. I will present the results at their con­fer­ence in Boston in March.

AF: Please send us the paper when ready. Now, work­ing mem­o­ry is a very impor­tant cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty for all of us. What oth­er appli­ca­tions can you envi­sion for well-designed and struc­tured work­ing mem­o­ry programs?

BG: I can eas­i­ly see the rel­e­vance in 2 fields. One, pro­fes­sion­al sports. Two, mil­i­tary train­ing. The Army’s Build Bet­ter Sol­dier ini­tia­tive is very inter­est­ed in devel­op­ing resis­tance and in cog­ni­tive enhance­ments. This would be a nat­ur­al enhance­ment, free of sec­ondary and unex­pect­ed side-effects of oth­er inter­ven­tions such as drugs and brain implants. We are right now con­duct­ing anoth­er study, this one focused on work­ing mem­o­ry train­ing for healthy col­lege stu­dents, to see if the inter­ven­tion can also be rel­e­vant to non-ADD/ ADHD pop­u­la­tions and could then be of inter­est for the Army.

AF: Pro­fes­sor Gib­son, many thanks for being with us. You are doing a lot of inter­est­ing work, please keep up in the loop.

BG: the plea­sure has been mine. I hope to talk to you soon.

——————————-

To learn more about Cogmed Work­ing Mem­o­ry Train­ing and RoboMemo.

Oth­er inter­views in our Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series:

On Work­ing Mem­o­ry Train­ing and RoboMemo: Inter­view with Dr. Torkel Kling­berg, pro­fes­sor at Karolin­s­ka Insti­tute, and direc­tor of the Devel­op­men­tal Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Lab, part of the Stock­holm Brain Institute.

Cog­ni­tive Train­ing and ADD/ADHD: Inter­view with Prof. David Rabin­er, Senior Research Sci­en­tist and the Direc­tor of Psy­chol­o­gy and Neu­ro­science Under­grad­u­ate Stud­ies at Duke University.