Function Of Training Condition Research Articles

Evaluation of a Novel Technology-Based Program Designed to Assess and Train Everyday Skills in Older Adults.

Background and ObjectivesPerformance of everyday activities is often challenging for older adults. We evaluated a novel computer-based functional skills assessment and training (CFSAT) program, which includes simulations of everyday tasks (e.g., money and medication management).Research Design and MethodsThe sample included noncognitively impaired (NC) older adults (n = 51) and cognitively impaired (CI) older adults (n = 43), who ranged in age from 60 to 86 years (M = 73.12; SD = 6.06), were primarily female (90%), and ethnically diverse (23% Hispanic, 51% African American). Participants (stratified by cognitive status) were randomized to 1 of the 2 conditions training alone (CFSAT) or CFSAT with computerized cognitive training and trained up to 24 training sessions. Task performance, using measures of completion time and efficiency (accuracy/completion time), was evaluated at baseline, the final training session, and immediately posttraining with an alternate form of the CFSAT assessment.ResultsBoth NC and CI participants demonstrated significant performance improvements across all tasks following training (all ps < .001). The CI participants demonstrated reduced training gains compared to the NC participants (all ps < .001). Training gains did not vary as a function of training conditions.Discussion and ImplicationsThe findings suggest that CFSAT is an efficacious program for assessing and training everyday task performance. CFSAT can ultimately be used as an intervention strategy to enhance functional independence for aging adults with and without cognitive impairments.

Can cognitive bias modification simultaneously target two behaviors? Approach bias retraining for alcohol and condom use.

This study tested the effectiveness of a cognitive bias modification (CBM) intervention to simultaneously reduce approach biases toward alcohol and increase approach biases toward condoms among high-risk young adults. Participants (N = 102) were randomly assigned to either a training condition or a sham-training condition. Participants in the training condition were trained to make avoidance movements away from alcohol stimuli and approach movements toward condom stimuli over four training sessions. Approach biases and behavior were assessed at pretest, posttest, and 3-month follow-up. Approach biases changed for both stimulus categories in accordance with training condition. Condom behavior and attitudes also changed as a function of training condition, such that participants in the training condition reported fewer instances of condom nonuse and a more positive attitudes toward condoms at a three-month follow-up. Participants in both conditions had significant reductions in alcohol consumption following the intervention and did not differ by training condition.

Effects of active and observational experience on EEG activity during early childhood.

While it is accepted that action experience facilitates action understanding, it is debated whether first-hand motor and visual experience differentially influence this ability. Action understanding relies on relatively broad cortical activity, including that of the neural mirroring and visual attention systems. Infant and adult research has demonstrated that prior motor and visual experience have distinct effects on cortical activity during action perception, though this has yet to be investigated in young children. We used a within-subject design and an at-home training paradigm to manipulate 3- to 6-year-olds' experience with two relatively novel actions. On Days 1-4, children received brief active training with one tool (i.e., motor experience) and observational training with the other tool (i.e., visual experience: video of a demonstrator modeling the action). On Day 5, we measured children's EEG mu/alpha (8-10Hz) and beta rhythm (16-20Hz) activity during observation and execution of these actions in the laboratory. Although central-parietal mu and beta rhythm activity did not differ as a function of training condition, desynchronization of the occipital alpha rhythm was greater during perception of the active training task than of the observational training task. Our findings suggest that, during early childhood, action experience may modulate visual attention during subsequent action perception. Further, children exhibited neural mirroring-central-parietal desynchronization during both tool-use action observation and execution-within the mu rhythm, but not the beta rhythm. These findings have significant implications for our understanding of the broad cortical activity that supports action perception during this period.

Functional differences between statistical learning with and without explicit training.

Humans are capable of rapidly extracting regularities from environmental input, a process known as statistical learning. This type of learning typically occurs automatically, through passive exposure to environmental input. The presumed function of statistical learning is to optimize processing, allowing the brain to more accurately predict and prepare for incoming input. In this study, we ask whether the function of statistical learning may be enhanced through supplementary explicit training, in which underlying regularities are explicitly taught rather than simply abstracted through exposure. Learners were randomly assigned either to an explicit group or an implicit group. All learners were exposed to a continuous stream of repeating nonsense words. Prior to this implicit training, learners in the explicit group received supplementary explicit training on the nonsense words. Statistical learning was assessed through a speeded reaction-time (RT) task, which measured the extent to which learners used acquired statistical knowledge to optimize online processing. Both RTs and brain potentials revealed significant differences in online processing as a function of training condition. RTs showed a crossover interaction; responses in the explicit group were faster to predictable targets and marginally slower to less predictable targets relative to responses in the implicit group. P300 potentials to predictable targets were larger in the explicit group than in the implicit group, suggesting greater recruitment of controlled, effortful processes. Taken together, these results suggest that information abstracted through passive exposure during statistical learning may be processed more automatically and with less effort than information that is acquired explicitly.

Change Processes During Cognitive Bias Modification for Obsessive Compulsive Beliefs

Multiple studies have found that cognitive bias modification (CBM) can be an effective intervention to reduce maladaptive, anxiety-linked cognitive biases and symptoms, but little is known about how it achieves its effects. CBM is posited to work by altering contingency learning about potential threat cues, rather than via habituation of fear and arousal (as hypothesized for exposure-based interventions). In the current study, multi-level modeling was used to examine the trajectories of potential change processes over the course of CBM for interpretation bias in a sample high in obsessive–compulsive (OC) symptoms (n = 75). Psychophysiological arousal (heart rate and galvanic skin response), subjective fear, and the development of a learned contingency between ambiguity tied to threat and safe outcomes were measured before, during, and after CBM. Results showed that, compared to a control group, CBM was effective at reducing OC beliefs (though not responses to subsequent OC stressors). Additionally, as expected, only contingency learning significantly changed as a function of training condition, while subjective fear and arousal did not. Moreover, post-training indicators of contingency learning predicted the extent OC beliefs changed from pre- to post-training for the “positive” CBM group only (and not for the control group). This indicates that CBM is likely not operating similarly to habituation, but is instead marked by change in cognitive processing. However, change in contingency learning did not fully mediate the effect of this intervention on change in OC beliefs, suggesting more work is needed to fully understand the mechanisms underlying CBM.

Working Memory, Strategy Knowledge, and Strategy Instruction in Children With Reading Disabilities

Two experiments investigated the effects of strategy knowledge and strategy training on the working memory (WM) performance in children (ages 10—11) with and without reading disabilities (RD). Experiment 1 examined the relationship between strategy knowledge (stability of strategy choices) and WM performance as a function of initial, gain (cued), and maintenance conditions. WM performance was significantly improved for both groups under cued conditions; however, the performances of children with RD were inferior to those of children without RD across all memory conditions. Measures of WM capacity rather than strategy stability or processing efficiency best predicted reading comprehension performance. Experiment 2 assessed the effects of strategy training on WM performance by randomly assigning children to strategy instruction or control conditions. Significant improvements in WM performance occurred as a function of training conditions, but the residual WM differences between the reading groups remained. Although the results showed that stable strategy choices, cued performance, and strategy instruction significantly bolstered WM performance in children with RD, their overall WM performance, however, was constrained by capacity limitations.

Structural Stability within the Lateral Cerebellar Nucleus of the Rat Following Complex Motor Learning

Complex motor learning, but not mere motor activity, has been previously shown to induce structural modifications within the cerebellar cortex. The present experiment examined whether similar changes occur within one of the primary output targets of the region of the cerebellar cortex in which these structural changes were described, the lateral cerebellar nucleus (LCN; dentate nucleus). Adult female rats were randomly allocated to one of three training conditions. Acrobatic condition (AC) rats were trained to complete a complex motor learning task consisting of a series of elevated obstacles while motor control (MC) condition animals were forced to traverse a flat obstacle-free runway equal in length to the AC task. Inactive condition (IC) animals received no motor training. Unbiased stereological techniques and electron microscopy were used to obtain estimates of synapse number and postsynaptic density (PSD) length within the LCN. Results showed that neither synapse number nor PSD length was significantly altered as a function of training condition. These results indicate that complex motor skill learning is associated with structural plasticity within the cerebellar cortex and with structural stability within the lateral cerebellar nucleus.

Increased phencyclidine self-administration due to food deprivation: interaction with concentration and training conditions.

Six monkeys were trained to self-administer orally delivered phencyclidine (0.25 mg/ml) under a fixed-ratio 16 (FR-16) schedule. Water was concurrently available under an FF-16 schedule. During initial phencyclidine training, three monkeys were allowed free access to food (food satiation) and three were maintained at 85% of their free-feeding body weights (food deprivation). At the end of the training phase, the food-satiated monkeys were food-deprived. After behavior was stable for ten sessions, all monkeys were food-satiated and tested with a range of phencyclidine concentrations (0.0625-1 mg/ml). They were subsequently food-deprived and tested with concentrations of 0.0312-1 mg/ml, and then they were again food-satiated and tested with 0.0312 and 0.25 mg/ml. The monkeys that were trained to self-administer phencyclidine while food-satiated showed substantial phencyclidine-maintained responding at lower drug concentrations when later tested while food-satiated. In contrast, monkeys that were trained while food-deprived did not respond for phencyclidine in excess of water at the lower concentrations when later tested while food-satiated. Drug-maintained performance during food deprivation did not change systematically as a function of training condition (food deprivation versus food satiation). These results illustrated a marked interaction between drug concentration and the feeding condition and this interaction was modified by training history.

Memory consolidation and fucosylation of crude synaptosomal glycoproteins resolved by gel electrophoresis: A regional study

Prior to learning a simple withdrawal from footshock by climbing on a safe platform, male albino rats were injected intraperitoneally with 3H- l -fucose. At various intervals after training the delipidated P2 fraction of Whittaker was prepared from the temporal cortex, hippocampus, caudate-putamen, and cerebellum of each subject. Gel electrophoresis was carried out using a three-layered discontinuous polyacrylamide-SDS system. It was found that, as a function of training condition, there were (a) no differences in any gel region in percentage of total protein determined densitometrically, (b) a region 4 mm into the gel and 22 mm into the gel (MW greater than 106 and 105, respectively) where, as a function of training condition, statistically significant differences in the caudate-putamen but not the other three regions were observed in percentage of H-fucose incorporation, (c) a region 26 mm from the origin where 3H-fucose incorporation differences as a function of training were observed in temporal cortex only, (d) no effects of training on 3H-fucose incorporation in hippocampus or cerebellum. These results indicate that quantitative changes occur in particular brain regions in the rates of 3H-fucose turnover of glycoproteins of particular molecular weight range after a training experience.

Discrimination reversal in the goldfish as a function of training conditions.

Discrimination reversal in the goldfish as a function of training conditions.

Step-through latencies in mice as a function of ECS-test interval

Abstract Mice were given either foot shock followed by ECS, foot shock alone, ECS alone or neither following a step-through response in a one trial passive avoidance situation. Subjects were given retention trials at one of 14 retest intervals. Significant effects were found as a function of training condition and retest interval. At retest intervals of less than 480 min following ECS-manipulation, response latencies were largely controlled by the proactive effects of ECS, independent of the learning situation. Thus, unconfounded measures of retention following ECS were possible only at intervals where the proactive effects of ECS had attenuated. Retention of the passive avoidance response, as well as its attenuation by ECS, was shown at all retest intervals from 8 hr to 42 days.