Department of Psychology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
Psychol Bull. 2010 Jul;136(4):659-76. doi: 10.1037/a0020080.
Does plasticity contribute to adult cognitive development, and if so, in what ways? The vague and overused concept of plasticity makes these controversial questions difficult to answer. In this article, we refine the notion of adult cognitive plasticity and sharpen its conceptual distinctiveness. According to our framework, adult cognitive plasticity is driven by a prolonged mismatch between functional organismic supplies and environmental demands and denotes the brain's capacity for anatomically implementing reactive changes in behavioral flexibility (i.e., the possible range of performance and function). We distinguish between 2 interconnected but distinct cognitive outcomes of adult cognitive plasticity: alterations in processing efficiency and alterations in representations. We demonstrate the usefulness of our framework in evaluating and interpreting (a) increments in frontal brain activations in the course of normal aging and (b) the effects of cognitive training in adulthood and old age. Finally, we outline new research questions and predictions generated by the present framework and recommend design features for future cognitive-training studies.
可塑性是否有助于成人认知发展，如果是，以何种方式？可塑性这一模糊且被滥用的概念使得这些有争议的问题难以回答。在本文中，我们对成人认知可塑性的概念进行了细化，并使其概念的独特性更加鲜明。根据我们的框架，成人认知可塑性是由功能生物体供应与环境需求之间长期不匹配驱动的，它表示大脑在解剖学上实现行为灵活性的反应性变化的能力（即，表现和功能的可能范围）。我们区分了成人认知可塑性的 2 个相互关联但又不同的认知结果：加工效率的改变和表征的改变。我们展示了我们的框架在评估和解释（a）正常衰老过程中额叶大脑激活的增加，以及（b）成年期和老年期认知训练的效果方面的有用性。最后，我们概述了本框架产生的新的研究问题和预测，并为未来的认知训练研究推荐了设计特点。
