Baseline capacities and motivation in executive control training of healthy older adults

Abstract

Objectives

Normal aging involves progressive prefrontal declines and impairments in executive control. This study aimed to examine the efficacy of an executive-control training focusing on working memory and inhibition, in healthy older adults, and to explore the role of individual differences in baseline capacities and motivation in explaining training gains.

Methods

Forty-four healthy older adults were randomly assigned to an experimental (training executive control) or active control group (training processing speed). Participants completed six online training sessions distributed across two weeks. Transfer effects to working memory (Operation Span test), response inhibition (Stop-Signal test), processing speed (Pattern Comparison) and reasoning (Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices and Cattell Culture Fair test) were evaluated. Furthermore, we explored individual differences in baseline capacities and assessed motivation during and after the intervention.

Results

The experimental group, but not the active control, showed significant transfer to response inhibition. Moreover, a general compensation effect was found: older adults with lower baseline capacities achieved higher levels of training improvement. Motivation was not related to training performance.

Conclusion

Our results encourage the use of executive control training to improve cognitive functions, reveal the importance of individual differences in training-related gains, and provide further support for cognitive plasticity during healthy aging.

Keywords:

• Aging
• cognitive plasticity
• training
• transfer
• individual differences
• executive control

Acknowledgements

We would like to specially thank L. Trujillo, B. Carmona, C. Cerutti and E. Franzese for their help in data collection.

Authors’ contributions

This work is part of the thesis dissertation of the first author. All authors developed the concept of the study together. MJM contributed to data collection, data analysis, and manuscript writing. MB and CG-A supervised the process of accomplishing the study. MJM wrote the first draft of the article. All authors reviewed and approved the last version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In the second pre and post-test session, participants performed a cognitive control task (AX-CPT) and an episodic memory task (Retrieval-Practice) in which their electrophysiological brain activity was also recorded and whose data are not reported in the present article.

2 As RAPM and Cattell tests – at pre-test – had a moderate correlation ρ = 0.43, p < 0.01, we computed an average of the two scores.

Additional information

Funding

The current research was completed thanks to financial support provided by the doctoral research grant BES-2013-066842 to MJM, and by grants from the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, and Junta de Andalucía-Feder to TB (PCIN-2015-132, PSI2015-65502-C2-1-P, A.CTS.111.UGR18 and PGC2018-093786-B-I00) and CG-A (PSI2015-65502-C2-2-P).