The Effects of Cognitive Training on Cognitive Abilities and Everyday Function: A 10-Week Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

With a random groups design, the current study examined whether a 10-week cognitive training could improve healthy older adult’s cognitive functions and everyday problem-solving and whether high ecological validity trainings would have greater positive impact upon everyday problem-solving than low ecological validity trainings. Eighty-six healthy Chinese older adult participants were assigned randomly to five groups, including one control group receiving no training and four groups receiving low ecological memory training, high ecological memory training, low ecological reasoning training, and high ecological reasoning training, respectively. Participants were measured pre- and posttraining on spatial working memory, numerical working memory, reasoning, and everyday problem-solving. Results of this study showed that cognitive training significantly improved targeted cognitive functions and everyday problem-solving performance in all the intervention groups. However, high ecological cognitive trainings failed to show superior impact upon everyday problem-solving compared with low ecological cognitive trainings.