María Soledad Segretin

National Scientific and Technical Research Council | conicet · Unit of Applied Neurobiology

El área de las ciencias del desarrollo ha comenzado a comenzado a estudiar el rol de las diferencias individuales en el desempeño cognitivo de niños/as para el diseño de intervenciones más efectivas (Katz et al., 2021). Hasta el momento, dichos abordajes se enfocaron en estudiar si los desempeños totales (eficiencia) se encuentran por encima o por...

Interval timing refers to the ability of the brain to perceive and measure the duration of time in the seconds-to-minute range. Young children’s time judgments are significantly more variable than adults’, associated with different factors (e.g., age, hormones, chronotype, and cognition). Despite this, little is known regarding the modulation of ti...

Child temperament is a predictor of non‐verbal ability (i.e. thinking and problem‐solving skills that do not fundamentally require verbal language production and comprehension). Given that temperament scores might vary depending on whether the reporter is a parent or a teacher, this study analyses (a) whether those reports are different and (b) how...

Cognitive interventions that involve executive functions (EF)-demanding activities are effective in changing task-related brain activity in children from homes with low socioeconomic status (SES). However, less is known about the efficiency of EF-based interventions in modifying segregation and integration properties of the functional neural organi...

Preschool children show neural responses and make behavioral adjustments immediately following an error. However, there is a lack of evidence regarding how neural responses to error predict subsequent behavioral adjustments during childhood. The aim of our study was to explore the neural dynamics of error processing and associated behavioral adjust...

Temperament is one of the factors that explain individual differences in child cognition, and it is usually measured through parental reports. Few studies showed that temperament reports varied depending on whether the reporter is a parent or a teacher, but a quite unexplored question is how each report predicts child cognition. This study analyzes...

Este libro es una obra colectiva que procura realiza un aporte en torno a la definición de la pobreza infantil en un sentido integral desde lo conceptual, metodológico y disciplinar. El fenómeno de la pobreza en la infancia es importante por su relevancia estadística, magnitud y evolución, pero también porque se trata de una experiencia de múltiple...

Neuroscientific research on childhood poverty provides evidence that contributes to advancing the understanding of how it impacts neural development. Such evidence has been used as a predictor of either adaptive behaviors and/or economic productivity during adult life or of the impossibility of such achievements due to assumptions of immutability o...

El estudio acerca de las causas de la pobreza ha sido influenciado por la teoría de la atribución, lo que permitió identificar los juicios predominantes que las personas establecen sobre tales causas. Los estudios locales sobre las atribuciones causales de la pobreza son escasos y no se ha identificado ninguno referido a las causas de la pobreza in...

Different interventions have shown effectiveness in modifying cognitive performance on cognitive control demanding tasks in children from poor homes. However, little is known about the influence of cognitive interventions on children’s brain functioning and how individual variability modulates the impact of those interventions. In the present study...

Contemporary evidence shows that different intervention approaches can be effective in improving executive cognitive performance in preschoolers from poor homes. However, several aspects about the role of individual and contextual differences in intervention effects remain to be elucidated. The present study aimed to explore the impact of a compute...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02735.].

The present work intends to thoroughly identify theoretical and practical applications of self-regulation (SR) in contemporary developmental research, by reviewing conceptual and operational definitions of SR, in addition to the methods and instruments used to assess it in empirical studies. 468 scientific articles with cumulative evidence from the...

Emotional appraisal is a crucial stage of emotional processing that prepares for action (coping). During this process different responses are generated from the evaluation of emotional aspects of the stimuli. These variations may be due to the influence of individual characteristics. The literature points to temperament as one of the factors associ...

The association between environmental factors and cognitive performance during childhood could be mediated by poverty (i.e., households with Unsatisfied or Satisfied Basic Needs). This study explored such mediating roles in preschoolers from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Tasks to assess executive attention, working memory, inhibitory control...

Latin America has increased its share of world scientific publications by nearly twofold during the last two decades (approximately from 2 to 4%). Despite this positive trend, the scholarly impact of scientific research produced in the region - measured in terms of citation rate - remains low. Two interrelated factors that contribute to this situat...

Over the last few decades, different interventions were shown to be effective in changing cognitive performance in preschoolers from poor homes undertaking tasks with executive demands. However, this evidence also showed that not all children included in the intervention groups equally increased their performance levels, which could be related to i...

Emotional processing and episodic memory are closely related throughout childhood development. With respect to emotional episodic memory, available evidence shows that the consolidation of information is accompanied by an arousal that generates longer duration and persistence of the memory representations. In the case of early stages of development...

Durante las últimas dos décadas, la investigación en el área de estudio de la pobreza ha comenzado a aportar evidencia que constituye un avance en la comprensión de cómo la adversidad temprana asociada a privaciones materiales, sociales y culturales modula el desarrollo cerebral. Cuando tal evidencia es utiliada en otros contextos disciplinares, co...

Introducción: En las últimas décadas se ha producido un crecimiento en la cantidad de estudios donde se realizaron intervenciones orientadas a optimizar procesos cognitivos autorregulatorios en niños y niñas en edad preescolar que viven en contextos de pobreza o con necesidades básicas insatisfechas (NBI). Un tema de gran relevancia dentro del área...

Introducción: El control cognitivo (CC) es un mecanismo central del desarrollo autorregulatorio conformado por diferentes procesos (e.g., atención, control inhibitorio, memoria de trabajo, flexibilidad cognitiva) que puede ser modulado por diferencias individuales, calidad de las experiencias en distintos contextos de desarrollo y por intervencione...

Extreme poverty all over the world is concentrated in rural settings. However, studies about cognition in low socioeconomic status (SES) children are for the most part conducted in urban populations. This paper investigates, in a poor rural sample, what are the individual and socioenvironmental variables that make the difference in performance in a...

En el contexto de la ciencia del desarrollo contemporánea, la autorregulación es un constructo que en términos generales y consensuados refiere a un conjunto diverso de procesos involucrados en tomar información propia y del entorno, evaluar opciones y consecuencias de pensamientos y conductas, y generar con ello una respuesta adaptativa para logra...

While poverty all over the world is more typical and extreme in rural contexts, interventions to improve cognition in low socioeconomic status (SES) children are for the most part based on studies conducted in urban populations. This paper investigate how poverty and rural or urban settings affect child cognitive performance. Executive functions an...

El presente trabajo propone analizar las asociaciones entre el temperamento y la regulación del cortisol en una muestra de 46 niños y niñas de 5 años de edad, de hogares pobres; así como el rol modulador del sexo y las condiciones socio-ambientales de los hogares, en tales asociaciones. Los resultados sugieren una mayor proporción de descenso del c...

Differences in performance in a planning task according to motivation of preschool children Diferenças de desempenho em uma área de planejamento de acordo com a motivação de crianças e pré-escolares. Palabras claves: Reporte de investigación; motivación; planificación; preescolares; valor intrínseco; dificultad. Palavras-chave: relatório de pesquis...

En el marco de un proyecto de intervención, orientado a optimizar el desempeño cognitivo a través de actividades de juego para madres y sus hijos, este estudio presenta los resultados de un análisis de asociación entre factores (a) individuales (i.e. cortisol; actividad electroencefalográfica; lenguaje; y salud), y (b) contextuales (i.e. caracterís...

Different ways of solving planning and spatial working memory tasks generate different taskperformance profiles. Tests were administered to 346 (planning) and 427 (spatial working memory) Argentinean children from different socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds. A cross-sectional design was performed to explore eventual variable profiles of performance t...

El presente trabajo analiza el impacto de dos modalidades de estimulación cognitiva (implementadas en el año 2005) en el desempeño en tareas con demanda de atención, memoria de trabajo, flexibilidad cognitiva y planificación. Los niños de cuatro años de edad fueron estimulados durante cuatro meses con dos modalidades de estimulación cognitiva: indi...

Background: Teachers’ conceptions and misconceptions about neuroscience are crucial in establishing a proper dialogue between neuroscience and education. In recent years, studies in different countries have examined primary and secondary school teachers’ conceptions. However, although preschool education has proved its importance to later academic...

For at least eight decades, researchers have analyzed the association between childhood poverty and cognitive development in different societies worldwide, but few of such studies have been carried out in Latin America. The aim of the present paper is to systematically review the empirical studies that have analyzed the associations between poverty...

El presente trabajo propone caracterizar el desempeño escolar de poblaciones de alumnos de nivel primario y secundario por medio del análisis de determinantes sociales y el contexto escolar; e identificar predictores de tal desempeño que contribuyan al diseño de estrategias de intervención. Para realizar los análisis de regresión (identificación de...

El estudio neurocientífico de la pobreza infantil realizado por diferentes grupos de investigación durante las últimas dos décadas ha permitido acumular evidencia que indica que el impacto de las carencias materiales y simbólicas por pobreza, desde la concepción, puede limitar las oportunidades de desarrollo e inclusión social de las personas duran...

The neuroscientific study of child poverty is a topic that has only recently emerged. In comparison with previous reviews (e.g., Hackman and Farah, 2009; Lipina and Colombo, 2009; Hackman et al., 2010; Raizada and Kishiyama, 2010; Lipina and Posner, 2012), our perspective synthesizes findings, and summarizes both conceptual and methodological contr...

Significance Executive functions (EF) imply processes critical for purposeful, goal-directed behavior. In children, evidence derived from laboratory measures indicates that training can improve EF. However, this hypothesis has never been explicitly examined based on real-world measures, especially of educational achievement. Here, we investigate wh...

The association between socioeconomic status and child cognitive development, and the positive impact of interventions aimed at optimizing cognitive performance, are well-documented. However, few studies have examined how specific socio-environmental factors may moderate the impact of cognitive interventions among poor children. In the present stud...

Introducción: Uno de los temas actuales en la agenda del estudio del desarrollo de los procesos cognitivos de control es analizar la estructura latente del desempeño. Dos temas centrales en el área son: (a) evaluar si tal estructura se basa en un constructo unitario o en un conjunto de procesos disociables; y (b) determinar el rol que tienen los pr...

Working memory and planning are fundamental cognitive skills supporting fluid reasoning. We show that 2 games that train working memory and planning skills in school-aged children promote transfer to 2 different tasks: an attentional test and a fluid reasoning test. We also show long-term improvement of planning and memory capacities in 8-year-old...

Attentional control, working memory, and planning paradigms associated with prefrontalexecutive subsystems have been administered to compare the non-verbal executive control performance of healthy children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. In addition, mediations of several sociodemographic variables, identified in the literature as part of...

Child poverty and child development are complex and multidimensional phenomena. The study of their interaction involves the analysis of different biological and psychosocial components within a continuous, dynamic, and growing interaction (Bradley & Corwyn, 2002; Evans, 2004; Lipina & Colombo, 2009). Hence, their study requires the involvement of m...

El presente estudio explora el valor predictivo del nivel socioeconómico, la salud mental materna y el temperamento infantil sobre el desempeño en la prueba de redes atencionales (ANT), que evalúa procesos atencionales de alerta, orientación y control, administrada a 203 niños de 4 y 5 años (M = 4.78; DE = .59), provenientes de hogares con y sin ne...

La modulación del desempeño cognitivo por pobreza infantil se asocia a la presencia de diferentes factores individuales y contextuales. El presente estudio propone analizar el valor predictivo de nivel socioeconómico, salud mental materna y temperamento sobre el desempeño en una tarea con demandas de atención. Se administró a 203 niños de edad pree...

El análisis del impacto de la pobreza infantil sobre el desempeño cognitivo, es abordado generalmente por medio de pruebas estandarizadas. La implementación de paradigmas de evaluación de procesos cognitivos de control, genera la posibilidad de introducir mayor especificidad. Este estudio presenta resultados de la administración de una batería de p...

In the past few decades, a particular need for a child-centered perspective has emerged, based on evidence that children are more susceptible to environmental and social risks, and that they have different needs than adults do. This article examines issues affecting children in existing measurements and presents conceptual considerations for future...

Las competencias de autorregulación son críticas para el desarrollo cognitivo, socio-emocional y académico adecuado, desde etapas tempranas del desarrollo infantil hasta la vida adulta (Kirkwood et al., 2008). Desde la perspectiva del desarrollo, la eficiencia de estas habilidades depende de la plasticidad de redes cerebrales específicas, que están...

Tanto la pobreza como el desarrollo cognitivo son fenómenos complejos y multidimensionales. El estudio de los mismos involucra el análisis de diferentes componentes biológicos y psicosociales, dentro de una interacción continua, dinámica y creciente (Beddington et al., 2008; Bradley y Corwyn, 2002; Brooks-Gunn y Duncan, 1997; Evans, 2004; Gordon et...

Since both child poverty and development are characterized by their multidimensional nature, the study of the underlying mechanisms involved in their interactions, as well as the design of interventions aimed at modifying them, require the incorporation of multidisciplinary frameworks that consider different epistemological, historic, cultural, eth...

Several studies carried out since the second half of the XXth century have demonstrated that poverty significantly influences child cognitive and emotional development. In the last decades, several intervention programs have been implemented to optimize the development of children living in poverty. Some of them had positive effects, and also allow...

El desarrollo infantil es un proceso complejo que involucra múltiples fenómenos a nivel de las competencias cognitivas, emocionales y sociales. Las oportunidades de desarrollo varían significativamente de acuerdo a la presencia de factores de vulnerabilidad social en los contextos de crianza. En particular, el impacto de la pobreza sobre el desarro...

The debates on the potential interdisciplinary association between neuroscience and education began approximately three decades ago. In order for the integration of neuroscientific and educational knowledge to impact on learning and teaching it would imply the consideration of the emergence of several cognitive and emotional processes during develo...

Neurocognitive Approaches in the Study of Child Poverty: Conceptual and Methodological Considerations. Several studies carried out since the second half of the XXth century have demonstrated that poverty significantly influences child cognitive and emotional development. In the last decades, several intervention programs have been implemented to op...

Se presenta el diseño, ejecución, síntesis de resultados de análisis de impacto y de predicción de los incrementos de puntajes post-intervención, de tres programas de estimulación de procesos cognitivos básicos de control (atención, control inhibitorio, memoria de trabajo, planificación) para niños de edad preescolar (3 a 5 años) provenientes de ho...

La presente ponencia tiene por objeto exponer algunos avances de la puesta en marcha del Proyecto de Investigación “Construcción multidisciplinaria de propuestas de enseñanza para optimizar competencias cognitivas y la adquisición de aprendizajes escolares tempranos (Matemática y Lengua) en niños y niñas de 4 y 5 años en riesgo social”, que se prop...

El informe “Desigualdad social y desempeño escolar: identificación de predictores de riesgo para el diseño de intervenciones publicas y/o curriculares” fue presentado por la Unidad de Neurobiología Aplicada (UNA) del CEMIC, dirigido por Sebastián Lipina. El trabajo se focaliza en el desempeño de las áreas de matemática y lengua de los niños de EGB...

Working memory, inhibitory control and planning paradigms, were used to evaluate executive performance of healthy children (N=208, 3-to 5-years-old) from poor (P) and non-poor (NP) homes (poverty criteria: UBN method). Significant differences were observed between groups in AnotB (working memory and inhibitory control) (MANOVA, Delay 10 sec, Correc...

Previous studies showed negative impact of poverty (UBN method) on executive performance in healthy preschoolers. Two (T1, T2) multimodular cognitive training interventions [T1: N= 237; T2 N=382) were applied in two new cohorts (3-5 years). Intervention Groups received individual (T1, T2) or group (T2) weekly sessions of training in tasks demanding...

Entre los años 2002 y 2005, un grupo de investigadores de la Unidad de Neurobiología Aplicada (UNA) diseñaron y ejecutaron dos programas de intervención -Programa de Intervención Escolar (PIE) y Programa Piloto de Estimulación Cognitiva (PPEC)-, orientados a entrenar operaciones cognitivas básicas (perspectiva de la Neurociencia Cognitiva) para niñ...

En estudios previos con niños de edad preescolar, se analizó el impacto de la pertenencia a hogares con Necesidades Básicas Insatisfechas (NBI, criterio de pobreza), sobre operaciones mentales básicas asociadas a la activación de diferentes redes de la corteza cerebral (atención, control de impulsos y representaciones, memoria de trabajo, flexibili...

La pobreza constituye una de las amenazas más significativas para la salud física y mental infantil. El estudio científico de sus efectos sobre el desarrollo cognitivo ha sido ampliamente estudiado desde las perspectivas de la psicometría y la evaluación educativa, siendo los hallazgos más comúnmente comunicados la disminución del cociente intelect...