Working memory training and transfer in older adults: Effects of age, baseline performance, and training gains.

Abstract

Recent studies suggest that working memory training may benefit older adults; however, findings regarding training and transfer effects are mixed. The current study aimed to investigate the effects of a process-based training intervention in a diverse sample of older adults and explored possible moderators of training and transfer effects. For that purpose, 80 older adults (65-95 years) were assigned either to a training group that worked on visuospatial, verbal, and executive working memory tasks for 9 sessions over 3 weeks or to a control group. Performance on trained and transfer tasks was assessed in all participants before and after the training period, as well as at a 9-month follow-up. Analyses revealed significant training effects in all 3 training tasks in trained participants relative to controls, as well as near transfer to a verbal working memory task and far transfer to a fluid intelligence task. Encouragingly, all training effects and the transfer effect to verbal working memory were stable at the 9-month follow-up session. Further analyses revealed that training gains were predicted by baseline performance in training tasks and (to a lesser degree) by age. Gains in transfer tasks were predicted by age and by the amount of improvement in the trained tasks. These findings suggest that cognitive plasticity is preserved over a large range of old age and that even a rather short training regime can lead to (partly specific) training and transfer effects. However, baseline performance, age, and training gains moderate the amount of plasticity.

Improving Older Adults’ Working Memory: the Influence of Age and Crystallized Intelligence on Training Outcomes

“…It supports also other work of Borella and collaborators that showed significant training and transfer effects not only in a sample of young-old adults (age range 65 to 75 years; Borella et al 2010) but also in old-old adults (age range 75 to 87 years; Borella et al 2013). However, these findings contrast an earlier study that reported smaller training and transfer gains with increasing age in older adults and no influence of crystallized abilities (Zinke et al 2014); however, Zinke et al (2014) trained much older adults than our study. The findings of both studies together indicate that age and basic cognitive abilities such as crystallized intelligence might play an important role for training outcomes in younger older adults (see also Borella et al 2017 for a similar finding).…”

“…Similarly, metaanalyses (Karbach and Verhaeghen 2014;Soveri et al 2017) did not find differences regarding training improvement between younger and older adults. However, comparing young-old with old-old adults, Zinke et al (2014) revealed that the moderating effect of age did emerge within the group of older adults.…”

“…Among the mediators studied so far, participants' age has been identified as an important factor that influences the training outcome. Single training studies suggested that the benefit of working memory trainings decreases with increasing age (e.g., Borella et al 2017;Brehmer et al 2012;Heinzel et al 2014;Zinke et al 2014). For example, Brehmer et al (2012) showed larger training improvements and near transfer effects in younger adults compared to older adults after 5 weeks of working memory training.…”

“…Participants had 10 min to work on the task. A similar procedure was reported by Zinke et al (2014). The dependent measure was the number of correct answers (maximum 29).…”

Do Individual Differences Predict Change in Cognitive Training Performance? A Latent Growth Curve Modeling Approach

“…A closely related yet potentiallydistinct factor possibly contributing tothese mixed findings is general cognitive functioning (von Bastian and Oberauer 2014). Only few studies have directly assessed the effect of baseline cognitive performance on training outcomes though, with some evidence suggesting that initially lowperforming individuals benefit more from training (e.g., Jaeggi et al 2008;Zinke et al 2014), but others reported opposite effects (e.g., Bürki et al 2014).Although motivation is arguably one of the most plausible factors possibly influencing cognitive training outcomes, its association with training performance has not yet been comprehensively examined. One exception is a study by Brose et al (2012), whoreported a positive associationbetween dailymotivation and daily cognitive performance on a 3-back task, indicating that on days on which task-related motivation was lower than on average, daily cognitive performance was also reduced.…”