YSM Issue 95.1

their grades twelve and eighteen months
after training—an advantage that grew
over time. This trend may suggest slower
and more modest progress in complicated
skills like comprehension.
Previous studies on non-conventional
training tools have been largely centered
around children with dyslexia, a learning
disorder that involves difficulty with
reading. Affected individuals have a
harder time decoding letters and words
into related speech sounds. This study
extends positive findings in dyslexic
children to a broader population.
It took the experimenters over three
years to complete the study—two years
on game design, followed by recruitment,
training, and follow-up studies for up to
eighteen months. Along the way, they
encountered a variety of challenges. Game
designers recruited over three hundred
children aged eight to fourteen to help
refine the SOM storyline and aesthetics. It
was extremely tricky to get children at this
age to follow instructions and to collect and
analyze their opinions. When the game
was finally ready for testing, researchers
had to coordinate logistics with teachers
and continuously edit their proposals to fit
into the original curriculum.
Usually, in a randomized control trial,
experimenters don’t know whether a
participant is assigned to the experimental
or control group. This process of
“blinding” reduces the researchers’ biases
when evaluating the participant. In this
study, however, it was impractical to blind
every experimenter since at least one of
them had to talk to school representatives
and supervise the training. In the end,
two experimenters were blinded, and the
third, Pasqualotto, became the one who
oversaw the entire program. Researchers
compared the results scored by the blinded
experimenters against combined results
from all three of them and found no
difference between the scores.
Italian is an extremely transparent
language. One can almost always
pronounce a word correctly following
pronunciation rules. In contrast, English
is an opaque language, with numerous
sounds corresponding to one letter and
vice versa. In logographic languages like
Chinese, there is no alphabet, and the
reader needs to remember the sounds of
each character. Pasqualotto and her team
hope to assess the efficacy of SOM in other
languages and compare it to Italian. “My
expectation is that training attentional
control and executive functions,
particularly working memory and
cognitive flexibility, could be beneficial
for all languages,” Pasqualotto said. But
it will be interesting to investigate the
potential differences in the extent of
progress made across different languages.
The researchers carried out the
training before COVID-19 when
social interactions were still largely
unrestricted. However, with the global
pandemic, it is harder not only for these
interactions to happen in the classroom
but also for experimenters to meet with
participants and administer the tests.
The pandemic pushed Pasqualotto and
her team to allow children to play the
game and carry out subsequent testing
at home. While the game was originally
Skies of Manawak Developers.
Behavorial Science
FEATURE
developed on
computers, the
researchers are now coming
up with a version on tablets
since touch-based technology is more
accessible and popular in an average
household. They are also updating
testing protocols so that cognitive tests
can be administered at home without
experimenters. They hope to eventually
develop a product complementary to
school activities that is simultaneously
useful for research purposes.
Despite the many challenges and
obstacles, Pasqualotto has been pleased
with her team's achievements. “Research
should have an impact on our life. This
type of study is certainly demanding in
terms of time and organization, but it also
gives you a bigger reward and sense of
satisfaction in the end,” Pasqualotto said. ■
IMAGE COURTESY OF STUDIO BLIQUO
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March 2022 Yale Scientific Magazine 33