@article{80a0c065c1574dd9be150763da9c683f,
title = "The effects of home-based cognitive training on verbal working memory and language comprehension in older adulthood",
abstract = "Effective language understanding is crucial to maintaining cognitive abilities and learning new information through adulthood. However, age-related declines in working memory (WM) have a robust negative influence on multiple aspects of language comprehension and use, potentially limiting communicative competence. In the current study (N D 41), we examined the effects of a novel home-based computerized cognitive training program targeting verbal WM on changes in verbal WM and language comprehension in healthy older adults relative to an active component-control group. Participants in the WM training group showed non-linear improvements in performance on trained verbal WM tasks. Relative to the active control group, WM training participants also showed improvements on untrained verbal WM tasks and selective improvements across untrained dimensions of language, including sentence memory, verbal fluency, and comprehension of syntactically ambiguous sentences. Though the current study is preliminary in nature, it does provide initial promising evidence that WM training may influence components of language comprehension in adulthood and suggests that home-based training of WM may be a viable option for probing the scope and limits of cognitive plasticity in older adults.",
keywords = "Aging, Cognitive training, Language, Working memory",
author = "Payne, {Brennan R.} and Stine-Morrow, {Elizabeth A.L.}",
note = "Funding Information: This research was funded by the University of Illinois Campus Research Board. The first author was supported by a National Institutes of Health training grant (T32-HD055272) and a Beckman Institute Graduate Fellowship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with funding provided by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation. Portions of this research were completed by BP in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois and were presented at the Cognitive Aging Conference, 2014. We would like to thank Thomas Deegan and Andy Battles for their programming assistance, and Kyle Payne and Sneha Gummuluri for their recruitment and data collection efforts. We'd like to thank Kiel Christianson, Duane Watson, and Kara Federmeier for their helpful comments on previous versions of this manuscript. Funding Information: This research was funded by the University of Illinois Campus Research Board. The first author was supported by a National Institutes of Health training grant (T32-HD055272) and a Beckman Institute Graduate Fellowship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with funding provided by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation. Portions of this research were completed by BP in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois and were presented at the Cognitive Aging Conference, 2014. We would like to thank Thomas Deegan and Andy Battles for their programming assistance, and Kyle Payne and Sneha Gummuluri for their recruitment and data collection efforts. We{\textquoteright}d like to thank Kiel Christianson, Duane Watson, and Kara Federmeier for their helpful comments on previous versions of this manuscript. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2017 Payne and Stine-Morrow.",
year = "2017",
month = aug,
day = "8",
doi = "10.3389/fnagi.2017.00256",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "9",
journal = "Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience",
issn = "1663-4365",
publisher = "Frontiers Research Foundation",
number = "AUG",
}