Cognitive training
Discovering that the brain can change as a result of experience
has resulted in the development of cognitive training. Cognitive training improves cognitive
functioning, which can increase working memory capacity and improve cognitive skills and functions in clinical populations with working memory deficiencies. Cognitive training may focus on attention, speed of processing, nerofeedback, dual- tasking and perceptual training.
Cognitive training has been shown to improve cognitive abilities
for up to five years. In one experiment, the goal was to prove that cognitive
training would increase the cognitive functions in older adults by using three
types of training (memory, reasoning and speed of processing). It was found
that improvements in cognitive ability not only was maintained over time but
had a positive transfer effect on everyday functioning. Therefore, these
results indicate that each type of cognitive training can produce immediate and
lasting improvements in each kind of cognitive ability, thus suggesting that
training can be beneficial to improving memory.
Cognitive training in areas other than memory has actually been
seen to generalize and transfer to memory systems. For example, the Improvement
in Memory with Plasticity-based Adaptive Cognitive Training (IMPACT) study by
the American Geriatrics Society in 2009 demonstrated that cognitive training designed to improve
accuracy and speed of the auditory system presented improvements in memory and attention
system functioning as well as auditory functioning.
Two cognitive training methods are:
·
Strategy
training is used to help
individuals remember increasing amounts of information of a particular type. It
involves teaching effective approaches to encoding, maintenance, and/ or recall from working memory.
The main goal of strategy training is to increase performance in tasks
requiring retention of information. Studies strongly support the claim that the
amount of information remembered can be increased by rehearsing out loud,
telling a story with stimuli, or using imagery to make stimuli stand out.
Strategy training has been used in children with Down syndrome and also in older adult populations.
·
Core
training involves repetition of
demanding working memory tasks. Some core training programs involve a
combination of several tasks with widely varying stimulus types. The diversity
of exercises increase the chance that one of, or some combination of the
training tasks, will produce desired training-related gains. A goal of
cognitive training is to impact the ease and success of cognitive performance
in one’s daily life. Core training can reduce the symptoms of Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and improve the quality of life
involving patients with multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia and also, those who have suffered from stroke.
The manner in which a training study is conducted could affect
the outcomes or perspection of the outcomes. Expectancy/effort effects occur
when the experimenter subconsciously influences the participants to perform a
desired result. One form of expectancy bias relates to placebo effects, which is the belief that training
should have a positive influence on cognition. A control group may help to eliminate this bias because this
group would not expect to benefit from the training. Researchers sometimes
generalize their results, which can be misleading and incorrect. An example is
to generalize findings of a single task and interpret the observed improvements
as a broadly defined cognitive ability. The study may result in inconsistency
if there are a variety of comparison groups used in working memory training,
which is impacted by: training and assessment timeline, assessment conditions,
training setting and control group selection.
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