The Effects of Mixed Working Memory Training on Subsequent Training Gains Among Older Adults (MixedWM)

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Status: Completed

Conditions: Cognitive Aging

Treatments: Behavioral: Different Mixed Condition (DM); Behavioral: Different Single Condition (DS); Behavioral: Non-WM Placebo Control (PC); Behavioral: Same Task (ST) Practice Control

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; NIH

Identifiers

NCT05672771

Mixed Working Memory Training

R56AG058708 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Details and patient eligibility

About

While an intellectually active and socially integrated lifestyle shows promise for promoting cognitive resilience, the mechanisms underlying any such effects are not well understood. The aim of the current project is test the implications of the "mutualism" hypothesis, which suggests that intellectual function emerges out of the reciprocal influence of growth in abilities as they are exercised in the ecology of everyday life. Such a view implies that improvement in one component will enhance the modifiability of a related component. An additional aim was to test the idea that mutualistic effects will be enhanced by more diverse training in related skills, such as interleaved training of multiple skills, relative to single-component training.

A "successive-enrichment" paradigm was developed to test this with working memory (WM) as the target for training given its centrality in models of attention, intellectual function, and everyday capacities such as reasoning and language comprehension. All participants receive the same target training, but the nature of the training that precedes it is manipulated. Outcome measures include pre- to posttest gains in working memory and episodic memory, as well as the rate of gain in learning the target task. The principle of enhanced mutualism would predict that more diverse experiences related to the target skill will enhance efficiency in acquiring the target skill.

Full description

Within conventional assessments of transfer that examine the effects of training on measures of function at a single time point, these ideas has not been tested. In this project, a "successive-enrichment" paradigm was used to examine improvement in cognitive skills as a function of different conditions for earlier training. The target for training is working memory (WM) given its centrality in models of attention, intellectual function, and everyday capacities such as reasoning and language comprehension.

In the successive-enrichment paradigm, all participants receive the same target training, but the nature of the training that precedes it is manipulated. Thus, in Phase 2, all participants are trained for 10 days on the reading span task (RdgS), in which the task is to verify sensibility in a set of sentences and retain in memory an alphabetic character presented after each sentence. The set size adapts to the participant's skill (in both accuracy of sensibility decisions and memory for the letter set). In Phase 1, participants are randomly assigned to one of four groups designed to test the assumption that related and diverse experiences with the target skill differentially enhance the rate of learning the new skill. In the Same Task (ST) control, participants train on the RdgS, and were expected to be at ceiling in Phase 2. In the Different Single condition (DS), participants trained on a WM task different from that in Phase 1 (the lexical decision span). In the Different Mixed (DM) condition, participants trained on two different interleaved WM tasks, the lexical decision span and the category span. In the non-WM Placebo Control (PC), participants train on a speeded lexical decision task (matched in materials and verbal decision component to the lexical decision span the but requiring no simultaneous memory.

Outcome measures include pre- to posttest gains in working memory and episodic memory, as well as the rate of gain in learning the RdgS in Phase 2. The PC and ST controls define the lower and upper limits of performance, respectively. The principle of enhanced mutualism would predict that the DM group will show more efficient learning of the RdgS in Phase 2 than the DS group, which will both show more efficient learning than the PC group.

Enrollment: 90 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 60 to 90 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

• Native English speakers or acquisition of English before age 6 yrs old
• Self-report of hearing ability sufficient to engage with lab personnel
• No stroke in the last 3 years
• No current cancer treatment involving radiation or chemotherapy - No self-reported learning disability
• No self-reported psychiatric disorder
• Willingness to be randomly assigned to training conditions
• No plans that would limit participation during the activity period
• No participation in a cognitive intervention program in the last year

No additional Exclusion Criteria.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Basic Science

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Factorial Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

---

90 participants in 4 patient groups, including a placebo group

Different Mixed Condition (DM)

Experimental group

Description:

Training in both Lexical Decision Span and Category Span in Phase 1 (which are both different from the target task Reading Span in Phase 2).

Treatment:

Behavioral: Different Mixed Condition (DM)

Different Single Condition (DS)

Experimental group

Description:

Training in the Lexical Decision Span in Phase 1 (which is different from the target task Reading Span in Phase 2).

Treatment:

Behavioral: Different Single Condition (DS)

Same Task (ST) Practice Control

Active Comparator group

Description:

Training in Reading Span task in Phase 1 (which is the same as target task in Phase 2).

Treatment:

Behavioral: Same Task (ST) Practice Control

Non-WM Placebo Control (PC)

Placebo Comparator group

Description:

Training in a speeded Lexical Decision task only (which has no memory component) in Phase 1 prior to Phase 2 training in WM.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Non-WM Placebo Control (PC)