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Online games training aging brains: limited transfer to cognitive control functions

The prevalence of age-related cognitive decline will increase due to graying of the global population. The goal of the present study was to test whether playing online cognitive training games can improve cognitive control (CC) in healthy older adults. Fifty-four older adults (age 60–77) played five...

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Autores principales: van Muijden, Jesse, Band, Guido P. H., Hommel, Bernhard
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3421963/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22912609
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00221
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author van Muijden, Jesse
Band, Guido P. H.
Hommel, Bernhard
author_facet van Muijden, Jesse
Band, Guido P. H.
Hommel, Bernhard
author_sort van Muijden, Jesse
collection PubMed
description The prevalence of age-related cognitive decline will increase due to graying of the global population. The goal of the present study was to test whether playing online cognitive training games can improve cognitive control (CC) in healthy older adults. Fifty-four older adults (age 60–77) played five different cognitive training games online for 30 min a day over a period of seven weeks (game group). Another group of 20 older adults (age 61–73) instead answered quiz questions about documentaries online (documentary group). Transfer was assessed by means of a cognitive test battery administered before and after the intervention. The test battery included measures of working memory updating, set shifting, response inhibition, attention, and inductive reasoning. Compared with the documentary group, the game group showed larger improvement of inhibition (Stop-Signal task) and inductive reasoning (Raven-SPM), whereas the documentary group showed more improvement in selective attention (UFoV-3). These effects qualify as transfer effects, because response inhibition, inductive reasoning and selective attention were not targeted by the interventions. However, because seven other indicators of CC did not show benefits of game training and some of those that did suffered from potential baseline differences, the study as a whole provides only modest support for the potential of videogame training to improve CC in healthy older adults.
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spelling pubmed-34219632012-08-21 Online games training aging brains: limited transfer to cognitive control functions van Muijden, Jesse Band, Guido P. H. Hommel, Bernhard Front Hum Neurosci Neuroscience The prevalence of age-related cognitive decline will increase due to graying of the global population. The goal of the present study was to test whether playing online cognitive training games can improve cognitive control (CC) in healthy older adults. Fifty-four older adults (age 60–77) played five different cognitive training games online for 30 min a day over a period of seven weeks (game group). Another group of 20 older adults (age 61–73) instead answered quiz questions about documentaries online (documentary group). Transfer was assessed by means of a cognitive test battery administered before and after the intervention. The test battery included measures of working memory updating, set shifting, response inhibition, attention, and inductive reasoning. Compared with the documentary group, the game group showed larger improvement of inhibition (Stop-Signal task) and inductive reasoning (Raven-SPM), whereas the documentary group showed more improvement in selective attention (UFoV-3). These effects qualify as transfer effects, because response inhibition, inductive reasoning and selective attention were not targeted by the interventions. However, because seven other indicators of CC did not show benefits of game training and some of those that did suffered from potential baseline differences, the study as a whole provides only modest support for the potential of videogame training to improve CC in healthy older adults. Frontiers Media S.A. 2012-08-17 /pmc/articles/PMC3421963/ /pubmed/22912609 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00221 Text en Copyright © 2012 van Muijden, Band and Hommel. http://www.frontiersin.org/licenseagreement This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited and subject to any copyright notices concerning any third-party graphics etc.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
van Muijden, Jesse
Band, Guido P. H.
Hommel, Bernhard
Online games training aging brains: limited transfer to cognitive control functions
title Online games training aging brains: limited transfer to cognitive control functions
title_full Online games training aging brains: limited transfer to cognitive control functions
title_fullStr Online games training aging brains: limited transfer to cognitive control functions
title_full_unstemmed Online games training aging brains: limited transfer to cognitive control functions
title_short Online games training aging brains: limited transfer to cognitive control functions
title_sort online games training aging brains: limited transfer to cognitive control functions
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3421963/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22912609
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00221
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