General and differential effects of a multimodal cognitive training program for the eldenly.

This study concerns the evaluation of the efficiency of a cognitive trainin g program on. 80-year-old subjects' performance measures on 8 cognitive tas ks (attentional control, memory, reasoning). The experimental group (N = 64 ) attended 6 multimodal cognitive training sessions (attention, memory, rea soning) whereas the control group (N = 18) took part in 6 discussion sessio ns. Elderly people's cognitive performances before and just after the progr am, as well as 6 and 9 months later were compared. The principal results sh ow a significant gain in cognitive performance on memory tasks even several months after the training program. The individual differences analysis sho ws that our training program teas primarily effective for subjects characte rised by high levels of performance on preliminary cognitive tests. Two con clusions are advanced; cognitive plasticity may not be possible for very ag ed people with low cognitive levels and limited educational background. Cog nitive programs should be adapted with regard to less abstract exercises ba sed on participants' cognitive levels.