Aaron Seitz, a professor of psychology at UC Riverside; and Susanne Jaeggi, a professor at the UC Irvine School of Education; have received a two-year grant from the National Institute of Health’s National Institute on Aging to study interventions that may ultimately contribute to slowing cognitive decline in older adults.
Seitz and Jaeggi will be joined by Anja Pahor, a UCI School of Education project scientist, in investigating whether individual differences in how well someone can deal with distracting information may explain some of the disparate results reported in the scientific literature on working memory training outcome.
“We are excited that this research will help us personalize future interventions to better address individual needs,” said Seitz, who holds the Campbell Endowed Term Chair for Research Excellence and Undergraduate Research Mentoring and directs the Brain Game Center and the Aging Initiative at UCR. “Currently, most programs focused on cognitive training assume a one-size fits all approach, which we already know doesn’t address the diverse people who can benefit from proper intervention approaches.”
Seitz and Jaeggi have three research goals:
• Test how the gamification of training might impact learning and transfer, and whether there are certain individuals who might benefit from gamification features while others may do more poorly given the extra complexity and distracting features found in games.
• Test the generalizability of findings using different types of working memory training.
• Investigate the benefits of incorporating sounds to support visual processing to further promote learning and transfer.
“This proposal is transformative in that it seeks to understand how individual cognitive strengths and needs in older adults may have different requirements for training interventions,” Jaeggi said. “Addressing cognitive decline in older adults has driven a now multibillion-dollar commercial market. Our research findings are intended to shed light on the factors that mediate and moderate these types of cognitive interventions and address the extent to which some procedures may, and others may not, lead to improvements in real-world cognition.”
Seitz stressed the research project is especially timely now.
“Most people have smartphones or other computerized devices, and during the pandemic have become familiar with video-conferencing tools that will allow us to administer the study remotely,” he said. “This can dramatically increase the accessibility and reach of the research.”
The project title is “Understanding Individual Differences in Working Memory Training and Transfer in Older Adults at Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias.”
The three researchers are also collaborating on a nationwide NIH-funded citizen science project that aims to recruit 30,000 volunteers to figure out what cognitive interventions might work best for whom, a project that is open for participation to all.
The training software for this research is being created by the team at the UC Riverside Brain Game Center for cross-platform game engines enabling the researchers to bring the lab to the participants. At the conclusion of the grant, the programs created will be made publicly available for research dissemination of personalized interventions that can support brain health in diverse populations.
(This announcement is a slightly modified version of a UC Irvine article.)