An Evaluation of a Working Memory Training Scheme in Older Adults

Abstract

Working memory is a cognitive process that is particularly vulnerable to decline with age. The current study sought to evaluate the efficacy of a working memory training scheme in improving memory in a group of older adults. A 5-week online training scheme was designed to provide training in the main components of Baddeley’s (2000) working memory model, namely auditory and visuospatial short-term and working memory. A group of older adults aged between 64 and 79 were randomly assigned to a trainee (n = 19) or control (n = 17) group, with trainees engaging in the adaptive training scheme and controls engaging in a non-adaptive version of the program. Before and after training and at 3- and 6-month follow-up sessions, trainees and controls were asked to complete measures of short-term and working memory, long-term episodic memory, subjective ratings of memory, and attention and achievement of goals set at the beginning of training. The results provided evidence of an expansion of auditory short-term memory span, which was maintained 6 months later, and transfer to long-term episodic memory but no evidence of improvement in working memory capacity per se. A serendipitous and intriguing finding of a relationship between time spent training, psychological stress, and training gains provided further insight into individual differences in training gains in older adults.

Computer-Based Cognitive Training in Aging

“…Five clinical studies were randomized controlled clinical trials (McAvinue et al, 2013; Corbett et al, 2015; Rose et al, 2015; Walton et al, 2015; Hyer et al, 2016), and one study included two randomly allotted intervention groups (Bozoki et al, 2013). All of them applied only computerized cognitive training.…”

“…The findings of the studies in Table 1 indicate that computerized cognitive training can lead to the improvement of cognitive functions such as reasoning skills (Corbett et al, 2015), short-term memory (McAvinue et al, 2013), working memory (Hyer et al, 2016), processing speed and visual working memory (Walton et al, 2015) in particular. However, this training should be performed over a longer time span since a short-term cognitive training mainly has an impact on short-term memory with temporary effects (McAvinue et al, 2013; Walton et al, 2015).…”

“…However, this training should be performed over a longer time span since a short-term cognitive training mainly has an impact on short-term memory with temporary effects (McAvinue et al, 2013; Walton et al, 2015). In addition, the training must be intense to become effective (cf.…”

Maintaining older brain functionality: A targeted review

“…However, two recent intervention studies (McAvinue et al, 2013;Sandberg et al, 2014) failed to show evidence of improvement in WM capacity. A 5-week online randomized adaptive training study based on the Baddeley model (Baddeley, 2000) to train auditory and visual-spatial short-term WM (McAvinue et al, 2013) showed improvement in short-term memory but not in WM despite the extensive training on updating and n-back tasks. The expansion of auditory short-term memory up to 6 months, and the transfer to long-term episodic memory (although not maintained at follow-up) is interesting.…”

Computerised working memory‐based cognitive remediation therapy does not affect Reading the Mind in The Eyes test performance or neural activity during a Facial Emotion Recognition test in psychosis

“…This study used an online CT programme that specifically targets working memory and was developed by our group (Dillon et al., ; Donohoe et al., ; Hargreaves et al., ; McAvinue et al., ). The programme consisted of education on working memory, strategy‐based learning and practice of nine working memory training exercises.…”