In recent years the idea of brain training has become quite popular; a quick Google search warrants almost 10 million results. Brain training is the concept that individuals can exercise their brains to improve aspects such as cognition, memory, and reflex. In a similar fashion to how quick this gained popularity, people began to question its legitimacy. After reviewing the available research, it is safe to say that brain training has a positive impact on older adults and their cognition. In the 2010 6-week long study: “Putting brain training to the test” brain training is challenged. It is seen that both experimental groups (exploring two different types of brain training) and the control all experienced increased scores on the two benchmark
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The 2015 study, “The Effect of an Online Cognitive Training Package in Healthy Older Adults: An Online Randomized Controlled Study” was a much more successful and applicable research study. The utilization of different training sessions which tested 6 different measures of cognition is especially important since cognition and brain functioning vary so much person to person. The nomothetic approach of only allowing participants who are older adults furthers the possible application of this data. This study took place over half a year which is about 4 times longer than the 2010 study that disagrees with brain training. This increases the amount of time dedicated to training sessions, and cognition may take a long time to improve, but it also increases the amount of time between testing. This increased time allows for the participants to ‘forget’ what the benchmark exam was like and in turn increases internal …show more content…
The study only included older adults with computers, which many people may see as a fatal flaw. Since this training is only done online anyway, and there is no paper formatted version, it only makes sense to test on older adults with computer abilities. Additionally, the usage of only older adults does limit the applicability to this cohort, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. The study notes that there are other studies that support these same findings in younger adults (Corbett, et al.,
The 2015 study, “The Effect of an Online Cognitive Training Package in Healthy Older Adults: An Online Randomized Controlled Study” was a much more successful and applicable research study. The utilization of different training sessions which tested 6 different measures of cognition is especially important since cognition and brain functioning vary so much person to person. The nomothetic approach of only allowing participants who are older adults furthers the possible application of this data. This study took place over half a year which is about 4 times longer than the 2010 study that disagrees with brain training. This increases the amount of time dedicated to training sessions, and cognition may take a long time to improve, but it also increases the amount of time between testing. This increased time allows for the participants to ‘forget’ what the benchmark exam was like and in turn increases internal …show more content…
The study only included older adults with computers, which many people may see as a fatal flaw. Since this training is only done online anyway, and there is no paper formatted version, it only makes sense to test on older adults with computer abilities. Additionally, the usage of only older adults does limit the applicability to this cohort, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. The study notes that there are other studies that support these same findings in younger adults (Corbett, et al.,