![Sample our Education journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5932/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Education.jpg"})
Abstract
Changes in strategic behavior were examined in older married couples participating in a cognitive intervention study. Participants were randomly assigned to: Questionnaire Control, Individual Training, or Collaborative Training. Trained participants completed inductive reasoning training sessions at home individually or as a couple. Participants were assessed at baseline, immediately following training, and a 3-month posttest. Overall, greater strategy use was related to higher ability performance across all groups. Collaborative and individual training groups showed a similar magnitude of strategy use at both posttests in terms of individual performance. Maintenance of strategy use on a collaborative task favored the collaborative group.
The research reported in this study was supported by a postdoctoral research award from Division 20 of the American Psychological Association and the Retirement Research Foundation awarded to Jennifer Margrett. Support also was received from postdoctoral research fellowships from the National Institute of Mental Health awarded to The Pennsylvania State University (#T32-MH-18904) and The Johns Hopkins University (#T32- MH-14592).
The training program used in the current study (CitationWillis & Schaie, 1986, 1994) was most recently updated in the context of the ACTIVE clinical trial (CitationBall et al., 2002; CitationJobe et al., 2001).
We thank Joan Irwin, Dawna Kasper, Mimi Lutz, Mary Markowski, Mike Nealon, Amy Roth, and Danielle Schmidheiser for their technical assistance with this project. We also gratefully acknowledge the couples that participated in this study.
Notes
Note. Couple means are reported for Letter Sets Test rather than by gender because each couple performed the Letter Sets task together and produced a single product. Couple means are blank for Word Series and Letter Series tests because couples performed these tests individually. Age: Young-Old (61–71 years) n = 50, Old-Old (72–89 years) n = 45.