The Effects of Mixed Working Memory Training on Subsequent Training Gains Among Older Adults

Summary

While an intellectually active and socially integrated lifestyle shows promise for promoting cognitive resilience, the mechanisms underlying any such effects are not well understood. The aim of the current project is test the implications of the "mutualism" hypothesis, which suggests that intellectual function emerges out of the reciprocal influence of growth in abilities as they are exercised in the ecology of everyday life. Such a view implies that improvement in one component will enhance the modifiability of a related component. An additional aim was to test the idea that mutualistic effects will be enhanced by more diverse training in related skills, such as interleaved training of multiple skills, relative to single-component training.

A "successive-enrichment" paradigm was developed to test this with working memory (WM) as the target for training given its centrality in models of attention, intellectual function, and everyday capacities such as reasoning and language comprehension. All participants receive the same target training, but the nature of the training that precedes it is manipulated. Outcome measures include pre- to posttest gains in working memory and episodic memory, as well as the rate of gain in learning the target task. The principle of enhanced mutualism would predict that more diverse experiences related to the target skill will enhance efficiency in acquiring the target skill.

Conditions

• Cognitive Aging

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Different Mixed Condition (DM)

Participants engage in home-based training on two working memory tasks, both different from those in the target task training. Goal is 10 days of training, with 4 8-min blocks of training each day.

BEHAVIORAL

Different Single Condition (DS)

Participants engage in home-based training on a working memory task that is different from that in the target task training. Goal is 10 days of training, with 4 8-min blocks of training each day.

BEHAVIORAL

Same Task (ST) Practice Control

Participants engage in home-based training on the exact same working memory tasks as that in the target task training. Goal is 10 days of training, with 4 8-min blocks of training each day.

BEHAVIORAL

Non-WM Placebo Control (PC)

Participants engage in home-based training on speeded verbal decision, which unlike the target task training, has no memory component. Goal is 10 days of training, with 4 8-min blocks of training each day.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute on Aging (NIA)

  collaborator NIH

• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Elizabeth A L Stine-Morrow, PhD · University of Illinois at Chicago

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Masking

SINGLE

Model

FACTORIAL

Eligibility

Min Age

60 Years

Max Age

90 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2020-08-26

Primary Completion

2022-01-30

Completion

2022-01-30

Countries

• United States

Study Locations