Even though a variety of cognitive interventions have been conducted to ameliorate age-related cognitive declines, the effects of cognitive intervention using activities in everyday life are still unknown. The purpose of this study was to compare the effects between tablet computer-based productive and receptive cognitive engagement using an alternating-treatment design. Three healthy older adults performed a total of 19 sessions consisting of three baseline periods and 16 alternating training sessions. The training sessions were divided into four blocks and each block involved four treatment sessions. Productive and receptive engagements were randomly allocated to four treatment sessions. All participants alternatively received productive engagement that requires learning new practical applications and receptive engagement requiring little new learning such as listening to music. Prefrontal cortex (PFC) activity using functional near-infrared spectroscopy and executive function through the Trail Making Test were assessed at the baseline and the end of each session. All data were visually analyzed. Visual analysis results showed that the productive engagement was associated with higher PFC activity and faster performance in the Trail Making Test, compared to those utilizing receptive engagement. These results suggest that productive engagement might be effective in facilitating PFC activity and improving the executive function of healthy older adults, indicating cognitively challenging activities are more beneficial relative to nonchallenging activities.

中文翻译：

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使用平板电脑进行认知训练可以增强健康老年人的认知功能吗？交替处理设计

尽管已经进行了各种认知干预来改善与年龄相关的认知衰退，但在日常生活中使用活动进行认知干预的效果仍然未知。本研究的目的是使用交替治疗设计比较基于平板电脑的生产性和接受性认知参与之间的效果。三名健康的老年人共进行了 19 次训练，其中包括三个基线期和 16 次交替训练。培训课程分为四个模块，每个模块涉及四个治疗课程。生产性和接受性的参与被随机分配到四个治疗阶段。所有参与者交替接受需要学习新的实际应用的生产性参与和需要很少新学习（例如听音乐）的接受性参与。使用功能性近红外光谱和执行功能通过 Trail Making Test 在基线和每个会话结束时评估前额叶皮层 (PFC) 活动。所有数据都进行了视觉分析。视觉分析结果表明，与使用接受性参与的人相比，生产性参与与更高的 PFC 活动和更快的跟踪测试表现相关。这些结果表明，生产性参与可能有效促进 PFC 活动和改善健康老年人的执行功能，