Prior studies in the elderly have shown limited results for programs of cognitive training using image association mnemonic techniques. Attempting to improve results, we found that three types of preliminary training (pretraining) enhanced learning of mnemonics and produced overall results showing improvements of 75-110% from baseline in the criterion measure (face/name recall). Controls improved 27%. Despite these positive results, we found substantial variability of individual response to treatment. Within group analysis of the three successful treatments suggested two psychometrics potentially useful for measuring attributes of individuals most likely to benefit from certain types of training. This led to the following new hypotheses to be tested in our proposed research: 1) Subjects who improve most from verbal elaboration of visual image association mnemonics will have high scores on measures of verbal intelligence and low scores on state anxiety measures. 2) Subjects who improve most from training in relaxation for performance anxiety prior to learning mnemonics will have low scores on measures of verbal intelligence and high scores on measures of state anxiety. Since no prior studies have examined personality factors as predictors of response to training, an additional hypothesis will be tested: 3) The NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI) and the Personality in Intellectual-Aging Contexts (PIC) will provide additional personality attributes not considered in Hypotheses 1-2 which reflect performance outcome. A final hypothesis will be tested relating to the potential benefit of combining two of our most effective treatments: 4) Participants will improve more with training combining two of our most effective treatments (mnemonic training plus pretraining in verbal elaboration of associations and pretraining in relaxation for performance anxiety), than participants receiving either treatment alone. We will test these hypotheses in two phases. In Phase 1 a blocked design with regression-type analyses in 484 subjects (121 subjects/group) will be used to test Hypotheses 1 and 2. All subjects in Phase 1 will also receive the personality measures. Phase 2 will independently re-test in a smaller group of subjects (120) any predictors of response found promising in Phase 1. Hypothesis 4 will be tested by between group analyses in Phase 1.
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