FORAGEKID | Foraging Behavior in children: A new way to understand attentional development

Summary
The understanding of human brain development is a crucial challenge in today’s society. It is fundamental to determine
appropriate 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 has
never been applied in children. In the present project, I will apply for the first time in psychological science an innovative
and multidisciplinary, theoretically-based paradigm to understand and measure EF in children: foraging. The research is
based 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 in
foraging and eye-movement data analyses. With my Host at UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID, in Fernando Maestú’s Lab, we
will assess the new tasks to determine their validity and applications to train EF in children by means of behavioral and
neuro-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 together
with the industrial partner, Cambridge Cognition, a company producing cognitive assessment tools. I will be trained in the
different steps of preparing a business plan to transfer our product to society. The outcome will be significant for the
development of technology, products, and strategies to meet the needs of the youngest members of our population.
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More information & hyperlinks
Web resources: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/793268
Start date: 01-08-2018
End date: 06-09-2021
Total budget - Public funding: 257 191,20 Euro - 257 191,00 Euro
Cordis data

Original description

The understanding of human brain development is a crucial challenge in today’s society. It is fundamental to determine
appropriate 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 has
never been applied in children. In the present project, I will apply for the first time in psychological science an innovative
and multidisciplinary, theoretically-based paradigm to understand and measure EF in children: foraging. The research is
based 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 in
foraging and eye-movement data analyses. With my Host at UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID, in Fernando Maestú’s Lab, we
will assess the new tasks to determine their validity and applications to train EF in children by means of behavioral and
neuro-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 together
with the industrial partner, Cambridge Cognition, a company producing cognitive assessment tools. I will be trained in the
different steps of preparing a business plan to transfer our product to society. The outcome will be significant for the
development of technology, products, and strategies to meet the needs of the youngest members of our population.

Status

CLOSED

Call topic

MSCA-IF-2017

Update Date

28-04-2024
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Horizon 2020
H2020-EU.1. EXCELLENT SCIENCE
H2020-EU.1.3. EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
H2020-EU.1.3.2. Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility
H2020-MSCA-IF-2017
MSCA-IF-2017