An Evaluation of a Working Memory Training Scheme in Older Adults
Open accessAbstract
Working memory is a cognitive process that is particularly vulnerable to decline with age. The current study sought to evaluate the efficacy of a working memory training scheme in improving memory in a group of older adults. A 5-week online training scheme was designed to provide training in the main components of Baddeley's (2000) working memory model, namely auditory and visuospatial short-term and working memory. A group of older adults aged between 64 and 79 were randomly assigned to a trainee (n = 19) or control (n = 17) group, with trainees engaging in the adaptive training scheme and controls engaging in a non-adaptive version of the program. Before and after training and at 3- and 6-month follow-up sessions, trainees and controls were asked to complete measures of short-term and working memory, long-term episodic memory, subjective ratings of memory, and attention and achievement of goals set at the beginning of training. The results provided evidence of an expansion of auditory short-term memory span, which was maintained 6 months later, and transfer to long-term episodic memory but no evidence of improvement in working memory capacity per se. A serendipitous and intriguing finding of a relationship between time spent training, psychological stress, and training gains provided further insight into individual differences in training gains in older adults.
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No transfer effects were observed in 3 out of 8 studies, and only nearest transfer effects as measured with digit span forward and/or backward were observed by three other studies.
“Critically, no transfer effects were observed in 3 out of 8 studies [72–74], and only nearest transfer effects as measured with digit span forward and/or backward were observed by three other studies [19, 75, 76].”
From Adaptive working memory training does not produce transfer effects in cognition and neuroimaging (2022) · cites this paper as [75]
The Results (page not supplied) report improvement on Digit Span Forwards, but also significant post-training improvement in immediate and delayed word recall. The Discussion (page not supplied) explicitly calls the word-recall findings evidence of transfer to episodic memory, contrary to the claim that this study observed only nearest transfer. The word-recall gains were not maintained at follow-up. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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“Critically, no transfer effects were observed in 3 out of 8 studies [72–74], and only nearest transfer effects as measured with digit span forward and/ or backward were observed by three other studies [19, 75, 76].”
ResultBoutzoukas, E. M., O’Shea, A., Kraft, J. N., Hardcastle, C., Evangelista, N. D., Hausman, H. K., Albizu, A., Van Etten, E. J., Bharadwaj, P. K., Smith, S. G., et al. (2022) · GeroScience · doi:10.1007/s11357-022-00538-y · Cited by 15 · see citing works
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Self-citation
- Authors
- McAvinue, L. P., Golemme, M., Castorina, M., Tatti, E., Pigni, F. M., Salomone, S., Brennan, S., & Robertson, I. H.
- Affiliations
- Trinity College Dublin (IE)
- Corresponding author
- McAvinue, Laura P.
- Venue
- Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2013
- Volume
- 5
- Pages
- 20-20
- ISSN
- 1663-4365 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3662021
- OpenAlex
- W2168731245
- Cited by
- 74
- References
- 40
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 5
- FWCI
- 8.58
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Arrow@dit (Dublin Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Abilities and Testing
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Functions and Memory
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology › Aging and Gerontology Research
- Keywords
- working memory training, older adults, cognitive aging, auditory short-term memory, visuospatial working memory, episodic memory, transfer of training, adaptive training, psychological stress
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