A mixed-methods investigation of young and older adults' strategies during age-sensitive visual working memory: co-developing a novel strategy trainin

人口正在迅速老龄化，迫切需要进行有助于促进健康老龄化的研究。“认知”是涉及思考和获取知识的过程（例如，注意力、记忆）。短期（“工作”）记忆能在脑海中保存少量即时信息，可用于日常生活中执行重要的认知任务。视觉工作记忆允许我们暂时保持有限数量的视觉信息，但这种能力随着年龄的增长而下降。重要的是，视觉工作记忆的下降可能会妨碍日常功能，比如识别人脸或安全驾驶汽车。然而，使用有效的策略可能有助于增加我们在视觉工作记忆中存储的信息量。一种潜在的策略是使用视觉语义，即熟悉度和意义，来帮助处理新信息。例如，如果你注意到一个人很像你熟悉的人，你以后就能更好地认出他们。在工作记忆任务中使用有效的策略可以提高老年人的独立性和生活质量，并有助于减缓或预防认知障碍。这个项目将发展对衰老、策略使用、认知表现和大脑功能之间关系的理解。研究1将包括对年轻人和老年人视觉工作记忆能力的行为和神经（EEG）影响的实验研究。基于这一新知识，在研究2中，我们将与社区老年人共同设计一种新的策略训练方案。在研究3中，通过一项随机对照试验，我们将调查干预对提高老年人视觉工作记忆容量的潜在有效性。

Populations are rapidly ageing and research which helps to foster healthy ageing is urgently required. 'Cognition' is the processes involved in thinking and acquiring knowledge (e.g., attention, memory). Short-term ('working') memory holds small amounts of information in mind, moment-to-moment, which can be used to carry out important cognitive tasks in everyday life. Visual working memory allows us to maintain a limited amount of visual information temporarily, but this ability declines with age. Importantly, declines in visual working memory could hinder everyday functions such as identifying a face or safely driving a car. However, using efficient strategies could potentially help to boost the amount of information we can store in visual working memory. One potential strategy is using visual semantics, that is, familiarity and meaning, to help process novel information. For example, if you notice a person resembles someone familiar, you would be better able to identify them later. Using effective strategies during working memory tasks could benefit independence and quality of life in older age, and help to slow or prevent cognitive impairment.This project will develop understanding of the relationships amongst ageing, strategy use, cognitive performance, and brain functioning. Study 1 will comprise an experimental investigation of the behavioural and neural (EEG) effects of young and older adults' strategies on visual working memory capacity. Based on this new knowledge, in Study 2, we will co-design a novel strategy training protocol with community-based older adults. In Study 3, via a pilot randomised controlled trial, we will investigate the potential effectiveness of the intervention for boosting older adults' visual working memory capacity.