AUTHOR=Booth Samantha J. , Brown Laura J. E. , Taylor Jason R. , Pobric Gorana TITLE=Experimental investigation of training schedule on home-based working memory training in healthy older adults JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology VOLUME=14 YEAR=2023 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1165275 DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1165275 ISSN=1664-1078 ABSTRACT=Introduction

The efficacy of working memory training (WMT) for cognitive enhancement in healthy older adults has been extensively investigated. Typically, WMT results in improved performance on the training task, but limited or no transfer of improvement to other cognitive tasks. Accordingly, there is a need to identify optimal intervention parameters to maximize training and transfer task effects of WMT. The current study aimed to investigate the effect of training schedule on training and transfer task performance of WMT in healthy older adults. A secondary aim was to examine the feasibility of participants performing the intervention online at home, unsupervised, and using their personal devices.

Methods

Participants (N = 71; mean age: 66 years) completed sixteen WMT or active-control sessions over eight (distributed) or four (intensive) weeks. Adaptive verbal and spatial n-back tasks were used as the WMT tasks. We tested near transfer effects to a digit-span task and far transfer effects to an abstract relational reasoning task.

Results

Participants successfully performed the cognitively demanding intervention using their own devices, online at home, and with minimal contact with the researcher. We observed a significant improvement in WMT task performance in the WMT group relative to active-controls, but no evidence of near or far transfer. Similar training effects were observed irrespective of the intensity of the training schedule.

Discussion

Our results suggest that comparable benefits could be observed when using less intensive schedules that may be more easily accommodated into everyday life.