Online Cognitive Stimulation Intervention (CSI): A Novel Approach to Improve Cognitive Functions in Healthy Older Adults

Cognitive interventions showed promising evidence in postponing the potential cognitive decline in older adults. However, the results of such interventions are still debated as not being ecologically valid nor producing transfer effect. Hence, we designed an ecologically valid intervention using online shopping applications to explore its effectiveness on older adults’ cognitive functioning. For this aim, we recruited 102 healthy Malaysian older adults (M= 66.18, SD= 4.95). Participants were randomly assigned to one of the study groups including the experimental (CSI), active (ACG), or passive (PCG) control groups. Participants in CSI and ACG attended 22 weekly intervention sessions, while PCG participants did not attend any intervention sessions. Participants in the CSI group completed a series of tasks targeted inhibition and WM-updating in shopping applications. In contrast, ACG participants were only asked to complete their non-CSI tasks by interacting freely with the same applications. All participants attended assessment sessions in the baseline, post-test, and a 1-month follow-up to complete an online survey and cognitive measures including Stroop, digit span, Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT), and the self-developed inhibition and WM-updating tasks using a travelling application (to examine the between-application transfer). Data was analysed using Bayesian independent t-test, and multiple linear regression. The results indicated a credible difference between CSI and PCG in post-test and follow-up in PASAT-3second, and between ACG and PCG in post-test and follow-up in PASAT-2second subscale. Moreover, CSI showed higher inhibition and WM-updating scores post-training in the travelling application compared to both control groups. Besides, we found that factors including age, baseline score, cognitive reserve, MoCA score, and training progress, are the significant predictors of mean differences. In conclusion, our findings revealed that being involved in cognitively stimulating activities would benefit older adults.