Cognitive Training as an Intervention to Improve Driving Ability in the Older Adult
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
Get this paper ↗ (full text — opens at the source; we link to it, we don't host it)
Summary
This study investigates whether progressive working memory training can improve driving ability in older adults, addressing the growing safety concerns associated with the aging baby boomer population. While previous research demonstrated that cognitive skills like attention and processing speed are plastic and improvable through training, it remained unclear whether these benefits transfer to complex, real-world functional behaviors such as driving. The authors hypothesized that because the interdependence between cognitive and motor systems increases with age, improvements in working memory would transfer to complex motor tasks and driving performance. The researchers employed a randomized controlled design involving young adults and older adults assigned to either a cognitive training group or a knowledge training control group. The intervention group underwent a five-week regimen of dual n-back working memory training, a task requiring simultaneous monitoring of auditory and visual stimuli. The control group performed vocabulary and trivia tasks designed to mimic the experimental conditions without targeting working memory. Participants were assessed before and after the training period using three categories of tests: near-transfer measures of working memory, far-transfer measures of fluid intelligence and complex motor control, and driving simulator assessments. The driving simulator tests evaluated performance on both simple and complex courses under single-task and divided-attention conditions, measuring metrics such as crashes, lane deviations, and response times. Results indicated that both young and older adults in the training group showed significant improvements in the dual n-back task. For young adults, these gains transferred to other working memory measures, such as the operation span test, but did not significantly transfer to intelligence measures, complex motor tasks, or driving simulator performance. Data for older adults were preliminary due to ongoing enrollment and testing, but trends suggested positive transfer effects. Specifically, older adults in the training group showed greater improvements in dual-task mobility measures, such as walking while talking, and demonstrated a trend toward improved driving performance under divided-attention conditions compared to the control group. The findings suggest that working memory training may be a viable intervention for improving driving safety in older adults, particularly in scenarios requiring divided attention. While the training had minimal impact on high-functioning young adults, the preliminary results for older adults indicate that cognitive training can ameliorate age-related declines in complex motor control. The authors conclude that if these transfer effects are confirmed with a larger sample, further studies examining on-road driving performance are warranted. This research highlights the potential for cognitive interventions to extend safe driving years in older populations, offering a promising avenue for rehabilitation and safety enhancement.
Key finding
Working memory training improved working memory and processing speed in young adults without transferring to driving performance, while preliminary data showed trends for transfer to driving and motor tasks under dual-task conditions in older adults.
Methodology
mixed_methods
Sample size: 92
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via bulk_ingest_rosap on 2026-05-23 (6 acquisition events logged).
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | rosap | — | — | 2 | 2026-05-23 |
| archive | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
| clean | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| chunk | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| embed | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-02 |
| enrich | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 3 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 19 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
Topics
Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.
- cognitive capacity variation
- simulator training transfer
- older driver retraining
- mci dementia driving
- cognitive impairment
Information type
What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).
- Applied Guidance: countermeasure evaluation
- Theoretical Contribution: computational model