Cognitive enhancement training in older workers

This research aims to assess the efficacy of an online brain training program
among older workers. One of the consequences of prolonging productive working
life is that older employees have to keep working during a time that they
already experience normal/age-related cognitive decline. At the same time, they
are encouraged to keep up new developments in working such as technological
advances that require the ability to learn and adapt to these new ways of
working. These trends, cognitive decline and new ways of working, oppose one
another rather than facilitate one another. Older workers have more difficulty
learning new skills, especially in an open office environment where there is
much noise and distraction. New ways of working, such as flex-working means in
large open offices occupied by a score of workers, are not suitable for
everyone. Working in large open offices with more co-workers mean more sound
distraction (co-workers on the phone and talking with each other) and visual
distraction (co-workers moving in and out of view, lack of wall space). New
ways of working also involve flexibility in job-related tasks, such as
switching between phone conversations, emails, meetings and writing tasks. In
sum, workers in this day and age should also be able to master new technology,
be able to switch rapidly between tasks when needed, not be distracted by
visual and auditory distractors in the office environment and on their
computer, and be able to rapidly take in and organize relevant information for
further processing and distribution.

The objective is to assess the efficacy of a cognitive enhancement training in
comparison to a general vitality training and a waiting list control group
among older workers.

The study has a randomized STRATIFIED design in which two types of
interventions (cognitive enhancement and vitality) are compared with each other
and a waiting list control group.

Cognitive enhancement group
In the cognitive enhancement group, participants will adhere to a two-week
online training course with attention and memory exercises. Training sessions
take place 5 days per week, 45 minutes training per session, plus well-being
questionnaires. For the cognitive enhancement intervention, participants engage
in online brain training activities for a period of two weeks. Tasks, tapping
in three different cognitive domains are being trained:
Inhibition is being trained by having participants learn to ignore auditory and
visual stimuli that are irrelevant for the task. Participants are taught to use
certain strategies to ignore these distractors. Over the period of two weeks,
more distractors will be presented and the task will become more difficult
Learning and organizing new materials will be trained by presenting new
information at a relatively fast pace after which participants have to remember
and organize this information into categories. Participants are taught to use
different mnemonics every day in order to be better able to memorize these
materials. Over the period of two weeks, this information and the organization
of this information becomes more complex and multiple mnemonics will have to be
utilized in order to learn and organize.
Task switching will be trained initially by having participants switch between
the tasks of the inhibition and memory components and presenting them with
strategies of how to do this best. Over the period of two weeks, other
work-related tasks will be added to the switching in order to make participants
improve in their task switching ability.

Vitality training group
Participants in the vitality training group will adhere to a two-week online
training course with vitality enhancing exercises. These exercises are focused
on relaxation, breathing and body exercises (while sitting in front of the
computer) are being trained. Participants follow on-line instructions and
videos. In week 1, there are separate exercises for relaxation, breathing and
body. In week 2, relaxation and breathing exercises will be combined.

Some tasks require mental effort (remembering words on the right spots or
remembering how many pictures ago a specific picture was presented).