Borella Erika, Carbone Elena, Pastore Massimiliano, De Beni Rossana, Carretti Barbara
Department of General Psychology, University of Padova Padova, Italy.
Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, University of Padova Padova, Italy.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2017 Mar 22;11:99. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2017.00099. eCollection 2017.
The aim of the present study was to explore whether individual characteristics such as age, education, vocabulary, and baseline performance in a working memory (WM) task-similar to the one used in the training (criterion task)-predict the short- and long-term specific gains and transfer effects of a verbal WM training for older adults. Four studies that adopted the Borella et al. (2010) verbal WM training procedure were found eligible for our analysis as they included: healthy older adults who attended either the training sessions (WM training group), or alternative activities (active control group); the same measures for assessing specific gains (on the criterion WM task), and transfer effects (nearest on a visuo-spatial WM task, near on short-term memory tasks and far on a measure of fluid intelligence, a measure of processing speed and two inhibitory measures); and a follow-up session. Linear mixed models confirmed the overall efficacy of the training, in the short-term at least, and some maintenance effects. In the trained group, the individual characteristics considered were found to contribute (albeit only modestly in some cases) to explaining the effects of the training. Overall, our findings suggest the importance of taking individual characteristics and individual differences into account when examining WM training gains in older adults.
本研究的目的是探讨个体特征，如年龄、教育程度、词汇量以及在工作记忆（WM）任务中的基线表现（类似于训练中使用的任务——标准任务），是否能预测老年人言语WM训练的短期和长期特定增益及迁移效应。有四项采用博雷拉等人（2010年）言语WM训练程序的研究符合我们的分析要求，因为它们包括：参加训练课程的健康老年人（WM训练组）或参加替代活动的健康老年人（积极对照组）；评估特定增益（在标准WM任务上）和迁移效应（在视觉空间WM任务上最接近、在短期记忆任务上接近、在流体智力测量、加工速度测量和两项抑制测量上较远）的相同指标；以及一次随访。线性混合模型证实了训练的总体效果，至少在短期内如此，以及一些维持效应。在训练组中，所考虑的个体特征被发现对解释训练效果有贡献（尽管在某些情况下贡献不大）。总体而言，我们的研究结果表明，在研究老年人WM训练增益时，考虑个体特征和个体差异很重要。
