Figure 1

Experiment design. (a) 77 children (9–10 y.o.) and 60 adolescents (15–17 y.o.) were asked to perform inhibitory control tasks (IC group) or knowledge- and vocabulary-based tasks (Active Control (AC) group) 15 min per day, 5 days a week for 5 weeks (25 sessions) on a tactile tablet. Participants were randomly assigned to the IC or the AC groups as in a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT). The AC condition allowed to control for test–retest effects. In both IC and AC training, the difficulty was progressively increased and adapted in real time to the learning curve of each participant to maintain the motivation of the participant and to prevent automaticity. (b) Participants performed a cognitive battery in the pre- and post-training sessions (longitudinal design) measuring different facets of executive functions: cognitive flexibility/switching (TMT), working memory updating (N-back task), and inhibitory control (Stroop task for interference control, Stop Signal and Simon tasks for response inhibition and ANT for attentional inhibition).