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Modifying Brain Networks 411Figure 18-2 Pictures of the screen during attention training exercises. Tracking exercises:A, the child’s task is to move the cat under a moving umbrella to avoid the rain; B, thechild moves the cat to the grass to avoid the mud. Over trials, the amount of grass is reducedand the mud increased until considerable concentration is required of the child tomove the cat to a grassy section. C, the child moves the cat to intercept the duck as it exitsthe pond. As the duck always swims in a straight line, in this exercise, the child can learnto predict where it will come out of the pond.the nontrained group performed a “control activity” instead of the training programfor the same number of sessions. The control activity consisted of watchingvideos that required an occasional response to keep the video moving forward. Athird experiment was identical to the second, except that children were 6 yearsold. All of the children seemed to enjoy the experience, and their caregivers werequite supportive of the effort.Five days seems a very brief period of training to influence the development ofnetworks that develop for many years. Our goal was to see whether the influenceof this small amount of training could be shown in performance on the ANT, andwhether it would generalize to a measure of intelligence. We also wished to determinewhether the training had any influence on the underlying networks asmeasured by electrical activity on the scalp.