RESUMEN
With the increasing aging population, contemporary society faces the imperative to develop approaches that efficiently delay the age-related decline in working memory capacity, which is a critical area within cognitive aging research. Nevertheless, there is insufficient evidence to support the efficacy of verbal working memory training across various sensory modalities (visual, auditory, and audiovisual) in enhancing the verbal working memory capacity of older adults. In this study, 60 healthy older adults (mean age = 67.07 ± 3.79 years, comprising 34 women and 26 men, mean education = 15.55 ± 2.53 years) were randomly assigned to one of four groups: visual verbal working memory (V-VWM) group, auditory verbal working memory (A-VWM) group, visual-auditory verbal working memory (VA-VWM) group, and a control group. The training duration spanned 12 days. We also investigated whether baseline level and education predicted the outcomes. Findings indicated that V-VWM training had a large effect on improving V-VWM task performance (Cohen's d = 1.765), A-VWM training showed a substantial effect on A-VWM task performance (Cohen's d = 1.904), and VA-VWM training demonstrated a significant effect on VA-VWM task performance (Cohen's d = 2.319) over pretest scores in older adults. Enhancements achieved through V-VWM training exhibited near transfer effects, improving performance in both A-VWM and VA-VWM tasks. In contrast, gains from A-VWM training were selectively transferred to the VA-VWM task. Furthermore, VA-VWM training led to improvements not only in V-VWM and A-VWM tasks but also extended to verbal operation span task with a significant 29.7 % increase. However, no significant transfer effects were observed for the DSF and DSB tasks across the three training groups. The maintenance effect of VA-VWM training persisted for two weeks across tasks involving VA-VWM, V-VWM, and A-VWM. The baseline of VWM span score influence the effect of V-VWM training and transfer effect of VA-VWM training. Education level did not predict the training effects of V-VWM, A-VWM, and VA-VWM. These findings highlight the nuanced effects of sensory-specific verbal working memory training in older adults, emphasizing the potential of tailored interventions to enhance specific aspects of cognitive function, while also highlighting the promising applications of mobile device training in enhancing cognitive skills among the elderly.
RESUMEN
PURPOSE: The purpose of the study was to investigate the treatment efficacy of a discourse-based working memory (WM) protocol for individuals with the amnestic type of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). METHOD: The current study employed a randomised, single-blind design. Fourteen individuals with MCI participated in the study (n = 7 treatment group and n = 7 control group). The treatment protocol consisted of 10 sessions two times per week, and treatment was individually administered only to the treatment group. A Wilcoxon signed-rank test was performed to verify pre-post comparisons within each group. Mann-Whitney nonparametric tests were conducted to confirm the differences between the treatment and control groups for the post-treatment scores. RESULT: The treatment group demonstrated a significant increase in story-retelling outcomes for both the treated stories and untreated novel stories compared to the control group. Furthermore, the treatment group presented transfer effects for WM span measures and controlled word association tasks. CONCLUSION: The results indicated that a discourse-based WM treatment protocol is efficacious for the amnestic type of mild cognitive impairment with the effects transferred to frontal lobe functions, as measured by WM tasks and semantic word fluency measures. Further studies are needed to track the trajectory of performance across sessions.