Souders Dustin J, Boot Walter R, Blocker Kenneth, Vitale Thomas, Roque Nelson A, Charness Neil
Department of Psychology, Florida State University Tallahassee, FL, USA.
Front Aging Neurosci. 2017 Feb 28;9:41. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2017.00041. eCollection 2017.
The degree to which "brain training" can improve general cognition, resulting in improved performance on tasks dissimilar from the trained tasks (transfer of training), is a controversial topic. Here, we tested the degree to which cognitive training, in the form of gamified training activities that have demonstrated some degree of success in the past, might result in broad transfer. Sixty older adults were randomly assigned to a gamified cognitive training intervention or to an active control condition that involved playing word and number puzzle games. Participants were provided with tablet computers and asked to engage in their assigned training for 30 45-min training sessions over the course of 1 month. Although intervention adherence was acceptable, little evidence for transfer was observed except for the performance of one task that most resembled the gamified cognitive training: There was a trend for greater improvement on a version of the corsi block tapping task for the cognitive training group relative to the control group. This task was very similar to one of the training games. Results suggest that participants were learning specific skills and strategies from game training that influenced their performance on a similar task. However, even this near-transfer effect was weak. Although the results were not positive with respect to broad transfer of training, longer duration studies with larger samples and the addition of a retention period are necessary before the benefit of this specific intervention can be ruled out.
“大脑训练”能在多大程度上改善一般认知能力，从而在与训练任务不同的任务上表现更好（训练迁移），这是一个有争议的话题。在此，我们测试了以游戏化训练活动形式进行的认知训练（过去已证明有一定程度的成功）可能产生广泛迁移的程度。60名老年人被随机分配到游戏化认知训练干预组或积极对照组，对照组参与文字和数字拼图游戏。为参与者提供平板电脑，并要求他们在1个月内进行30次45分钟的指定训练。尽管干预依从性尚可，但除了一项与游戏化认知训练最相似的任务表现外，几乎没有观察到迁移的证据：认知训练组在一种版本的科西块点击任务上相对于对照组有更大改善的趋势。这项任务与其中一个训练游戏非常相似。结果表明，参与者正在从游戏训练中学习特定技能和策略，这些技能和策略影响了他们在类似任务上的表现。然而，即使这种近迁移效应也很微弱。尽管就训练的广泛迁移而言结果并不乐观，但在排除这种特定干预的益处之前，有必要进行样本量更大且增加了保留期的更长时间的研究。
