Goghari Vina M, Lawlor-Savage Linette
Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto ON, Canada.
Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, Calgary AB, Canada.
Front Aging Neurosci. 2017 Feb 28;9:39. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2017.00039. eCollection 2017.
Recent attention has focused on the benefits of cognitive training in healthy adults. Many commercial cognitive training programs are available given the attraction of not only bettering one's cognitive capacity, but also potentially preventing age-related declines, which is of particular interest to older adults. The issue of whether cognitive training can improve performance within cognitive domains not trained (i.e., far transfer) is controversial, with meta-analyses of cognitive training both supporting and falsifying this claim. More support is present for the near transfer (i.e., transfer in cognitive domain trained) of cognitive training; however, not in all studies. To date, no studies have compared working memory training to training higher-level processes themselves, namely logic and planning. We studied 97 healthy older adults above the age of 65. Healthy older adults completed either an 8-week web-based cognitive training program on working memory or logic and planning. An additional no-training control group completed two assessments 8-weeks apart. Participants were assessed on cognitive measures of near and far transfer, including working memory, planning, reasoning, processing speed, verbal fluency, cognitive flexibility, and creativity. Participants improved on the trained tasks from the first day to last day of training. Bayesian analyses demonstrated no near or far transfer effects after cognitive training. These results support the conclusion that performance-adaptive computerized cognitive training may not enhance cognition in healthy older adults. Our lack of findings could be due to a variety of reasons, including studying a cohort of healthy older adults that were performing near their cognitive ceiling, employing a training protocol that was not sufficient to produce a change, or that no true findings exist. Research suggests numerous study factors that can moderate the results. In addition, the role of psychological variables, such as expectations and motivation to train, are critical in understanding the effects of cognitive training.
最近，人们的注意力集中在认知训练对健康成年人的益处上。鉴于认知训练不仅能提升认知能力，还可能预防与年龄相关的认知衰退，这对老年人尤为重要，许多商业认知训练项目应运而生。认知训练能否提高未训练认知领域的表现（即远迁移）这一问题存在争议，认知训练的元分析既有支持也有反驳这一观点的。对于认知训练的近迁移（即在训练的认知领域内迁移）有更多支持；然而，并非所有研究都是如此。迄今为止，尚无研究将工作记忆训练与更高层次的认知过程训练（即逻辑和规划）进行比较。我们对97名65岁以上的健康老年人进行了研究。健康的老年人完成了一个为期8周的基于网络的认知训练项目，该项目要么是关于工作记忆，要么是关于逻辑和规划。另外，一个无训练对照组在相隔8周的时间里完成了两次评估。参与者接受了近迁移和远迁移的认知测量评估，包括工作记忆、规划、推理、处理速度、语言流畅性、认知灵活性和创造力。参与者在训练的第一天到最后一天，在训练任务上都有进步。贝叶斯分析表明，认知训练后没有近迁移或远迁移效应。这些结果支持了这样的结论：性能自适应的计算机化认知训练可能无法提高健康老年人的认知能力。我们没有得出结果可能有多种原因，包括研究的是一群认知能力接近上限的健康老年人、采用的训练方案不足以产生变化，或者根本不存在真正的效果。研究表明有许多研究因素会影响结果。此外，心理变量的作用，如训练的期望和动机，对于理解认知训练的效果至关重要。
