Toovey Benjamin Robert William, Kattner Florian, Schubert Torsten
Department of Psychology, Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, Germany.
Institute of Psychology, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2021 Feb 25;12:615518. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.615518. eCollection 2021.
Maintaining and coordinating multiple task-sets is difficult and leads to costs, however task-switching training can reduce these deficits. A recent study in young adults demonstrated that this training effect occurs at an amodal processing level. Old age is associated with reduced cognitive plasticity and further increases the performance costs when mixing multiple tasks. Thus, cognitive aging might be a limiting factor for inducing cross-modal training effects in a task-switching environment. We trained participants, aged 62-83 years, with an auditory task-switching paradigm over four sessions (2880 total trials), to investigate whether training-related reductions in task-switching costs would also manifest in an untrained visual modality version of the task. Two control groups trained with single tasks (active control) or not trained (passive control) allowed us to identify improvements specific to task-switching training. To make statistical evaluations of any age differences in training and cross-modal transfer, the data from the Kattner cohort were incorporated into the present analysis. Despite the tendency for older adults to respond more cautiously, task-switching training specifically led to a mixing cost reduction in both trained and untrained modalities, the magnitude of which was statistically similar regardless of age. In line with a growing body of research, we failed to observe any far transfer effects in measures of inhibition, working memory or fluid intelligence. Overall, we conclude that any apparent cognitive limitations associated with aging do not prevent cognitive control processes which support set-shifting from improving at an amodal level.
维持和协调多个任务集是困难的，且会产生成本，然而任务切换训练可以减少这些缺陷。最近一项针对年轻人的研究表明，这种训练效果发生在一种无模态加工水平上。衰老与认知可塑性降低相关，并且在混合多个任务时会进一步增加执行成本。因此，认知衰老可能是在任务切换环境中诱导跨模态训练效果的一个限制因素。我们对62至83岁的参与者进行了一项听觉任务切换范式的训练，共四个阶段（总计2880次试验），以研究与训练相关的任务切换成本降低是否也会在该任务未经训练的视觉模态版本中体现出来。两个对照组分别进行了单任务训练（主动控制组）或未接受训练（被动控制组），这使我们能够确定任务切换训练特有的改善情况。为了对训练和跨模态转移中的任何年龄差异进行统计评估，来自卡特纳队列的数据被纳入了本分析。尽管老年人有更谨慎回应的倾向，但任务切换训练特别导致了训练和未训练模态下的混合成本降低，无论年龄大小，其降低幅度在统计学上相似。与越来越多的研究一致，我们在抑制、工作记忆或流体智力的测量中未观察到任何远迁移效应。总体而言，我们得出结论，与衰老相关的任何明显认知限制并不会阻止支持任务转换的认知控制过程在无模态水平上得到改善。
