Filtering the Noise: A Gamified Approach to Cognitive Control in Children
In today's digital world, understanding how children filter out irrelevant information is crucial for cognitive science and education. We present a task battery designed to assess semantic and executive control in children aged 4-10 years, with initial data already collected in Italian. Semantic control tasks involve recognizing relations in meaning between stimuli, while executive tasks rely on non-semantic visuospatial features. Control demands are manipulated by pairing target stimuli with distractors that vary in their semantic or visuospatial similarity. Our next goal is to develop a multilingual, online app that integrates gamification techniques into these tasks. This platform will allow children to complete short, engaging game-based sessions from home using tablets or smartphones, enabling large-scale, cross-linguistic assessment and training. We seek expert feedback on methodological considerations in gamifying cognitive assessments for children, strategies for cross-linguistic adaptation, maintaining data quality in an online, gamified environment.