Hundred Days of Cognitive Training Enhance Broad Cognitive Abilities in Adulthood: Findings from the COGITO Study

Abstract

We examined whether positive transfer of cognitive training, which so far has been observed for individual tests only, also generalizes to cognitive abilities, thereby carrying greater promise for improving everyday intellectual competence in adulthood and old age. In the COGITO Study, 101 younger and 103 older adults practiced six tests of perceptual speed (PS), three tests of working memory (WM), and three tests of episodic memory (EM) for over 100 daily 1-h sessions. Transfer assessment included multiple tests of PS, WM, EM, and reasoning. In both age groups, reliable positive transfer was found not only for individual tests but also for cognitive abilities, represented as latent factors. Furthermore, the pattern of correlations between latent change factors of practiced and latent change factors of transfer tasks indicates systematic relations at the level of broad abilities, making the interpretation of effects as resulting from unspecific increases in motivation or self-concept less likely.

Keywords: cognitive abilities; cognitive training; latent factors; transfer; working memory.

Figure 1

Performance scores on Digit-Symbol Substitution Test as a function of age for Berlin Aging Study Participants (black circles), COGITO study intervention group participants (blue circles), COGITO study control group participants (green circles). “+” signs denote means for these groups and for meta-analytic results from Hoyer et al. (; in red).

Figure 2

Latent difference score model for modeling training-induced changes at the latent factor level. Squares represent observed variables, circles represent latent factors and the triangle serves to represent information regarding means and intercepts. Free parameters are indicated by asterisks. Parameters with equal sign and the same subscript are constrained to be equal to each other (i.e., strong measurement invariance with equal factor loadings and intercepts across occasions and across experimental and control groups). T1: Pre-test occasion; T2: Post-test occasion; V1–V3: observed variables (i.e., tasks of one ability); F: latent factor of ability; LC: Latent change factor; α: latent mean of ability factor at pre-test; β: mean difference between latent ability factors at pre- and post-test (=latent change, or latent difference score); γ: variance (individual differences) in latent ability at pre-test; δ: variance (individual differences) in latent ability changes between pre- and post-test; ε: covariance between individual differences in latent ability at pre-test and latent changes. For further information on two-occasion latent difference modeling in general, see McArdle and Nesselroade (1994).

Figure 3

Observed and latent net effect sizes of performance gains from pre-test to post-test for WM, Gf/reasoning, and EM. Bars show net effect sizes (standardized changes in the experimental group minus standardized changes in the control group), separately for younger (gray bars) and older (black bars) adults. Statistically significant net effect sizes correspond to reliable interactions (*P < 0.05) between group (experimental vs. control) and occasion (pre-test vs. post-test).