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Executive functions (EF) — such as inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility — are fundamental for child development and are closely associated with school readiness, self-regulation, and cognitive health. However, challenges persist regarding the standardization, ecological validity, and accessibility of tools used to assess EF in children.
This dissertation presents CAPE-KIDS, a research-oriented digital platform designed to support the creation, execution, and analysis of cognitive tasks and training protocols focused on EF in children aged 5 to 9 years. The project was guided by a scoping review of the scientific literature, following PRISMA-ScR guidelines, which identified the most commonly used tasks for this age group.
The platform provides a modular architecture and a visual, timeline-based interface, enabling the design of customized studies without requiring programming skills. It was implemented using NestJS for the backend and React for the frontend. The development process involved experts in psychology and child neurodevelopment, who contributed to the analysis of tasks, platform design, and validation. As a proof of concept, the platform includes widely used EF tasks such as Go/No-Go and Flanker task, with support for experimental configurations and accurate performance data collection.