Feasibility of the Mio-Training: A metacognitive training for children and adolescents

Background: The Mio-Training is a novel multicomponent mobile serious game designed to strengthen cognitive development of children and adolescents. By combining intensive working memory training, mnemonic strategy training, coordinative challenges, and metacognitive reflection, the Mio-Training addresses the shortage of effective cognitive training programs for children and adolescents. This article reports on the development of the Mio-Training and presents results from a feasibility study with healthy children and adolescents. Methods: We included 21 healthy children and adolescents (aged 8-16 years) who underwent 5 weeks of Mio-Training and filled out a feasibility questionnaire (enjoyment, usability, level of autonomy, perceived impact, preferences and potential improvements) after using the Mio-Training. Within-training performance data was collected during the use of the multimodal Mio-Training. Results: The Mio-Training was perceived as feasible, with a high compliance rate of 95%. The usability, the enjoyment of the training, the level of autonomy and the perceived impact were rated as positive. The compliance and the socioeconomic status correlated significantly with enjoyment of the training, design, perceived flexibility, perceived difficulty, subjective duration of the training, motivation and self-efficacy ( r = .455 to .698, p <.001 to .044). Within-training performance improved significantly after acquiring a new mnemonic strategy ( p <.001 to .005, g = .327 to .881). Data from the intensive working memory training revealed strong variability in performance gains, with approximately half of the users showing improvement in their working memory performance. Conclusion: This study gives insight into the feasibility of a novel digital, game-based, multimodal training program focusing on metacognition. The combination of feasibility data and within-training performance essentially contributes to the development and revision of the Mio-Training. We conclude that the Mio-Training is feasible and users show high compliance. However, there is large inter-individual variance in within-training performance, and an evaluation of individual progress patterns is needed. With the insights of this feasibility study the Mio-Training will be evaluated in young patients with an increased risk for atypical cognitive development such as children after cancer or with AD(H)D and will hopefully lead to cognitive far transfer effects in everyday and school life. Trial registration: Clinicaltrials.gov (NCT06464237, date of registration: 12.06.2024)