Strategy training to support healthy cognitive ageing: behavioural, neuroimaging, and real-world investigations

Our project is aimed at boosting memory and thinking skills ('cognition') through the adult lifespan, and helping prevent impairment in older age. The abilities underlying moment-to-moment functioning typically decline gradually as we age. For example, we might notice more short-term memory slips ('what did I come in here for?'). With rapidly ageing populations, rates of cognitive impairment and dementia are increasing (WHO, 2021). Accessible, cost-effective interventions that promote healthy and active ageing are required (WHO, 2020). Importantly, the ways in which we approach cognitive tasks, such as using particular strategies, could help to maintain our thinking skills and even delay onset of impairment and dementia (Cabeza et al. 2018). Instructing people to use their cognitive abilities in specific ways can therefore boost performance, but more research is needed to inform future interventions (WHO, 2019).

We are experts in cognitive ageing, dementia, and strategy training, using lab-based and 'real-world' experiments, and eye-tracking and brain imaging techniques (e.g. Allen ... & Nicholls, 2021; Gonzalez ... & Burke, 2016; Parra, ... Nicholls, et al., 2019; von Bastian et al., 2022). Using these methods, we propose to examine how strategies can effectively enhance younger and older adults' cognitive functioning. Strategies include actively rehearsing information or prioritising important details (Gonthier, 2021). Indeed, we showed that younger and older adults' visual short-term memory, which is vulnerable to age-related decline (Nicholls & English, 2020), can be boosted by training in prioritisation (Allen et al., 2021). However, we now need to investigate strategies comprehensively to understand which can work well and for whom, and the associated patterns of brain activity, during everyday tasks.

Our proposed research will incorporate the latest theoretical and methodological developments in cognition and ageing research alongside co-design with targeted user groups from the community and the voluntary, clinical, and public sectors. Our first set of studies will involve traditional, lab-based experiments measuring performance of real-world short- and long-term memory tasks, based on validated protocols. Younger and older adults will be asked to remember objects presented in realistic, virtual scenes (e.g. yellow teapot on a kitchen worktop). We will comprehensively establish the range of strategies they report and assess the relationships with memory performance. We will then investigate strategies and cognitive performance over time using an 'experience sampling' method that we have previously validated with older adults. This involves daily participation via smartphones in everyday life, and will further establish variation due to factors such as personality and mental wellbeing. Finally, we will assess the impacts of training younger and older adults to use the two best candidate strategies that emerged from the earlier work. We will also track eye movements related to strategy and cognitive performance, and employ innovative, cost-effective, and non-invasive methods for establishing associated brain functioning patterns.

We will provide important new insights regarding cognition and cognitive ageing while developing accessible, scalable, and cost-effective approaches to supporting cognition in the real world. Throughout, we will engage our stakeholders (e.g. community-based older adults, NHS Lanarkshire, Scottish Government Age Equality Network, Scottish Older People's Assembly, U3A), and an independent expert academic panel. We will share our findings via academic publications and conferences, and an extensive range of public engagement activities, culminating in a 'Strategy Toolkit' developed for and with stakeholders. This will provide state-of-the-art, accessible, evidence-based guidelines and resources on cognition and cognitive ageing, and how to use strategies to support everyday functioning.