Inhibitory control stimulation in elementary school children through digital games: A systematic mapping study

Abstract

The inhibitory control is a component of the executive functions that allows the individual to inhibit inadequate behaviors, resist distractions and select a relevant stimulus when executing activities. In the neuropsychology field, evidences of stimulation and improvement of the inhibitory control through school interventions is sought by using computerized software, such as digital games. These research studies constitute an important investigation area within the executive functions in ecological approaches. This paper presents a systematic mapping study on inhibitory control stimulation in elementary school children with the use of digital games. The investigation encompassed an automated database search with further backward snowballing procedure with the final selection for additional publications as research strategy. The automated search considered six databases: SCOPUS, PubMed, IEEE Explore Digital Library, ACM Library, Springer Link, and Scielo. The initial database search found 641 works published between 2014 and 2019. After the exclusion and inclusion criteria were considered, three publications related to digital games or mobile applications were found and selected for analysis, which focused on inhibitory control or correlated processes stimulation in school-based interventions with elementary school children. Results indicated that investigations within the field are incipient, pointing to an emerging research area.

Keywords:

• Children
• digital games
• inhibitory control
• neuropsychological intervention
• school intervention

Acknowledgements

This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001. Also, we thank the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development – CNPq/Brazil (http://www.cnpq.br) for providing financial support for this study, process number 313311/2019-6 and 306395/2017-7. Moreover, we extend our thanks to the Editors and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, which helped improve the paper. Finally, we would like to thank Feevale University (http://www.feevale.br) and Vale do Rio dos Sinos University (Unisinos - http://www.unisinos.br) for supporting this research.

Notes

1 SCOPUS – Retrieved from: https://www.scopus.com/

2 PubMed – Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

3 IEEE Explore Digital Library – Retrieved from: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/

4 ACM Digital Library – Retrieved from: https://dl.acm.org/

5 Springer Link Base – Retrieved from: https://link.springer.com/

6 Scielo Base – Retrieved from: https://www.scielo.org/

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Brazilian Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) under the finance code 001 and by the Brazilian Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) process number 313311/2019-6.