Ng Nicole F, Schafer Robert J, Simone Christa M, Osman Allen M
Department of Research and Development, Lumos Labs, San Francisco, CA, United States.
Formerly of Lumos Labs, San Francisco, CA, United States.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2020 Mar 17;14:15. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.00015. eCollection 2020.
Many popular activities are thought by the general public to improve cognitive function. Such expectations can influence how often people engage in these activities, as well as the scientific evaluation of their putative cognitive benefits, e.g., placebo effects. Here, we gathered survey data about the public's perceptions of nine different activities commonly thought to be cognitively stimulating, including "brain-training" games. Information was collected about the degree to which participants thought each activity was beneficial for improving cognitive function and how often they engaged in each activity. The patterns of correlation between ratings reveal details about the perception of cognitive benefits and its relation to engagement. They suggest that participants varied with respect to an overarching perception of the entire set of activities, which were perceived also as divided into three clusters. Frequency of engagement and perceived cognitive benefits were positively correlated across participants for each activity considered individually. But, when the activities were compared, the magnitude of their perceived benefits was not a good predictor of their frequency of engagement (and vice versa). Though small, there were systematic demographic differences. Women were more optimistic than men about cognitive benefits. Individual participants differed in the range of their ratings of benefit across activities, and these ranges were greater for younger than older participants, suggesting that perceptions of benefit are more differentiated among the young. Besides contributing to a better understanding of public expectations of cognitive benefits, the findings of this study are relevant to the critical evaluation of such benefits. Our survey can be viewed as providing an interface between expectations held by the general public and the design of studies examining the efficacy of cognitive training. The type of information it provides could be used in the selection of activities performed by an active control group, so that control activities match the treatment intervention as closely as possible with respect to such expectations.
许多大众认为流行的活动能改善认知功能。这种期望会影响人们参与这些活动的频率，以及对其假定认知益处（如安慰剂效应）的科学评估。在此，我们收集了有关公众对九种通常被认为具有认知刺激作用的不同活动看法的调查数据，包括“大脑训练”游戏。收集了关于参与者认为每项活动对改善认知功能有益的程度以及他们参与每项活动频率的信息。评分之间的相关模式揭示了对认知益处的看法及其与参与度关系的细节。结果表明，参与者对这一系列活动的总体看法存在差异，这些活动也被分为三类。就每项单独考虑的活动而言，参与者的参与频率与感知到的认知益处呈正相关。但是，当对这些活动进行比较时，其感知益处的大小并不能很好地预测其参与频率（反之亦然）。虽然差异较小，但存在系统性的人口统计学差异。女性对认知益处的看法比男性更乐观。个体参与者在对各项活动益处评分的范围上存在差异，且年轻人的评分范围比老年人更大，这表明年轻人对益处的看法更加分化。除了有助于更好地理解公众对认知益处的期望外，本研究的结果还与对这些益处的批判性评估相关。我们的调查可被视为在公众期望与检验认知训练效果的研究设计之间提供了一个接口。它所提供的信息类型可用于选择主动对照组所进行的活动，以便对照活动在这些期望方面尽可能与治疗干预相匹配。
