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Cognitive Training For Independent And Vital Elderly Essay

¶ … Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly -- ACTIVE) was a randomized controlled, single-blind trial; the group design was with four groups, which included " ... 3 treatment groups and a control group" (Willis, et al., 2006). Participant selection: the researchers had recruited 2,832 elder persons (who lived independently, not in nursing homes, for example) that averaged 73.6 years of age; the researchers located the participants from community centers, senior housing, clinics and hospitals in 6 American cities (Birmingham; Detroit; Indianapolis; State College, PA; Boston; and Baltimore). These individuals were originally recruited in April 1998 and there was a follow-up in December 2004; 67% of the original sample participated in 2004.

Assignment to groups: those who were disqualified from the study included: younger than 65; or had serious cognitive decline; had other "substantial impairments"; had Alzheimer disease; were near death or in serious decline; nearly blind, nearly deaf or had trouble communicating adequately; had recent cognitive training; or were simply going to be unavailable for the whole of the study period

Assignment to groups and description of the groups and the treatment: There were four groups in all; three of them were part of the research and one was a "control...

The treatment for each of the 3 intervention groups included a "narrowly" targeted a certain cognitive ability (memory, reasoning, or speed of processing); for the memory training they used "mnemonic strategies" (including ability to organize, visualize make associations and remember word lists); for the reasoning intervention teaching strategies were used " ... for finding the pattern in a letter ... and identifying the next word or letter in a series"; and for the speed of processing an image was presented on a computer screen at "increasingly brief exposures" (Willis, 2808).
Outcome measures: Besides the initial sessions described above, there were "booster training" sessions at 11 and 35 months; those lasted 75 minutes and were designed to "maintain the improvement in cognitive ability." Cognitive outcomes measured how effective each intervention was in the various cognitive abilities of the participants; for memory training 3 measures of verbal ability were tested; also 3 reasoning abilities were tested; and 3 outcomes were measured for speed of processing (Willis, 2808).

What were the researchers actually testing -- what did they hope to find out?

This was reportedly the first study of its kind to carefully examine the "long-term outcomes of…

Sources used in this document:
Works Cited

Willis, S.L., Tennsdedt, S. L., Marsiske, M., Ball, K., Elias, J., Koepke, K.M., Morris, J.N.,

Rebok, G.W., Unverzagt, F.W., Stoddard, A.M., and Wright, E. (2006). Long-Term

Effects of Cognitive Training on Everyday Functional Outcomes in Older Adults.

Journal of the American Medical Association, 296(23). 2805-2014.
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