Discourse-based verbal working memory training and transfer effects for individuals with an amnestic type of mild cognitive impairment

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• mild cognitive impairment
• verbal working memory training
• discourse-based treatment
• treatment efficacy
• transfer effects
• generalisation effects

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was partly supported by the National Research Council of Science & Technology (NST) grant by the Korea government (MSIT; No. CAP21053-000), the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT; 2022R1A2C2005062), and the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (NRF-2022R1I1A4063209).