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Completed

NCT Number: NCT05358145

The Training Effects of Tinkering Activities on Cognitive Flexibility in Older Adults From Communities

Aging has been a serious global-wise concern in public health. In particular, elders face declination of cognitive functions that threaten their quality of life. A good approach to slow down cognitive declination during aging processes is therefore in urgent need. According to the Successful Aging model (Rowe, J.W. and Kahn, R.L) participation in meaningful occupational activity may maintains high cognitive and body function. This sub-project is a part of the larger integrated project that will address the need for cognitive promotion by conducting cognitive training interventions on community older adults, utilizing the National Taiwan Science Education Center (NTSEC) as the public recruiting site as well as intervention site. In this sub-project, a 12-week intervention will be carried out with three protocols: 1) Tinkering activities, 2)Controlled Tinkering Activities, and 3) Board Game intervention. Board games serve as a commonly seen cognitive training, with a growing series of literature continuing to support board games being the medium of cognitive promotion. Tinkering activities are primarily used in fields of education that comprise science, art, and technology. Through a series of themes objectives, participants can involve interestingly, creatively, and flexibly in the activity when the participants fulfill the goal with the materials retrievable at the site. The anticipation is that the elders participating in Tinkering activities may increase their cognitive flexibility as the participants involve in the elements hidden within the core of the training, such as problem exploration, active thinking and inference, trial and error, and problem-solving. The investigators target to obtain pre-and post-intervention behavioral and neurophysiological data, including electroencephalogram data in 40 experimental participants, 40 active control participants, and 40 passive control participants over a period of 3 years.

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Key information

Conditions

Cognitive Training

Age range

65 year and older

Sex eligibility

All sexes

Study type

Interventional

Phase

Not applicable

Primary location

College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

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Who can participate

Healthy volunteers accepted: Yes

Only the study team can determine whether someone qualifies for participation.

Inclusion criteria

  • Literate in Mandarin and Taiwanese
  • Willing to participate entirely in this research.
  • Age >65

Exclusion criteria

  • Participated in cognitive-related training in the past two months.
  • Severe impairment of visual or auditory abilities.
  • Diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), or Dementia
  • Severe psychological or behavioral disorder that would seriously interfere with the progress of activity
  • History of degenerative cognitive disorder (e.g., acute stroke, traumatic brain injury, unconscious), organic mental disorders, brain dysfunction, or other neurology-related diagnoses.

Treatment and study plan

Tinkering Activities

Behavioral

Tinkering activities are activities that comprise elements of science, art, and technology. Through a series of themes objectives, participants can involve interestingly, creatively, and flexibly in the activity when they fulfill the goal with the materials retrievable at the site. Participants will be trained as they involve in the elements hidden within the core of the training, such as problem exploration, active thinking and inference, trial and error, and problem-solving.

Control Tinkering Activities

Behavioral

Controlled Tinkering Activities utilize the themes of Tinkering activities but eliminate the core of Tinkering training, hence implementing a new set of activities that emphasize participants strictly follow procedures to complete the similar objective of Tinkering activities. Each participant will end up with a similar piece of work as Tinkering Activities participants would without problem exploration, active thinking and inference, trial and error, and problem-solving.

Board Games Activities

Behavioral

Board games are often constructed with concepts of different cognitive components, such as attention, working memory, planning, calculation; therefore serve as a commonly seen cognitive training, while more and more literature continues to support tabletop games being the medium of cognitive promotion.

Primary outcomes

  1. Changes of Event-related potential component (ERP): P2, N2, P3

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12, Week 36

    The EEG data is recorded while the participants are carrying out the task-switching paradigm. The data will then be analyzed in terms of Event-Related Potential(ERP), where the components' changes will be observed in terms of amplitude and latency.

  2. Changes of reaction time and accuracy of task-switching paradigm

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12, Week 36

    The task-switching paradigm will ask the participants to judge whether the number(stimulus) presented is 1) even or odd, OR, 2) more than or less than 5. The switching between these rules will induce a switch cost effect (the time when the rule changes, the reaction time will increase to compensate the cognitive process needed to make the change) if the reaction time decreases after intervention, it implies an improvement.

  3. Changes of Accuracy in Wisconsin Card Sorting Test

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12, Week 36

    Score ranged 0-128, the higher the score, the better the executive function

  4. Changes of Number of Categories Completed in Wisconsin Card Sorting Test

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12, Week 36

    The number of sequences of 10 consecutive correct matches (maximum = 6), higher the score, the better the executive function

  5. Changes of Trials to Complete First Category in Wisconsin Card Sorting Test

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12, Week 36

    Total number of trials to complete first category, the less the score, the better the executive function

  6. Changes of Percent Perseverative Errors in Wisconsin Card Sorting Test

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12, Week 36

    The concentration of perseverative errors in relation to overall test performance (the number of trials given) multiplied by 100. The less the score, the better the executive function.

  7. Changes of Failure to Maintain Set in Wisconsin Card Sorting Test

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12, Week 36

    When a participant makes five or more consecutive correct matches but then makes an error before successfully completing the category, the less the score, the better the executive function.

Secondary outcomes

  1. Changes of University of California, Los Angeles Loneliness Scale

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12, Week 36

    score ranged 20-80, the higher the greater sense of loneliness in the participants.

  2. Changes of Geriatric Depression Scale

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12, Week 36

    Score ranged 0-15, the higher the score, the severe the depressive symptoms.

  3. Changes of Flow Scale

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12, Week 36

    Score ranged 1-5, higher the score, the better the flow experience the participant had.

  4. Changes of Cognitive Flexibility Scale (CFS)

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12, Week 36

    It is a 12-item 6-point scale in Likert format, the higher the score, the higher the participants' cognitive flexibility.

  5. Changes of Guilford's Alternative Uses Test (GAU)

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12, Week 36

    Scoring in terms of originality, fluency, elaboration and flexibility. The higher the score the better the creativity and divergent thinking.

  6. Changes of Color Trails Test (CTT)

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12, Week 36

    Measures in time, error, cues, near miss, and color error. The less time, error, cues, near miss and color error the participants take, the better the executive function, alternate and sustain attention.

  7. Changes of University of California, San Diego Performance-Based Skills Assessment (UPSA-BRIEF)

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12, Week 36

    Score range 0-100, the higher the score, the better the function of activities of daily living.

  8. Changes of Remote Associates Test

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12, Week 36

    Score range 0-30. The higher the score, the better the ability of remote associate creativity.

  9. Changes of Neural functional activity during inferential processing

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12

    Participants will undergo a Rule Inference functional magnetic resonance imaging task to infer underlying rules that map color configurations of circles in a triangular arrangement to a target color category within as few tries as possible under active or passive conditions. The goal for participants will be to infer the cue-category association rules using as few cues as possible. The primary outcome measure here is the degree of neural response estimate change in blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal pre- and post-intervention.

  10. Changes of overall accuracy during inferential processing

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12

    Changes from pre- to post-intervention in participant overall accuracy in identifying latent rules in the Rule Inference functional magnetic resonance imaging task.

  11. Changes of learning rate during inferential processing

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12

    Changes from pre- to post-intervention in participant number of trials to criterion in the Rule Inference functional magnetic resonance imaging task.

  12. Changes of strategic performance during inferential processing

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12

    Changes from pre- to post-intervention in participant coefficients of expression of modeled response strategies in the Rule Inference functional magnetic resonance imaging task will be assessed.

  13. Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Logical Memory I & II

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12

    Score range 0 - 75. Higher score indicates better verbal episodic memory.

  14. Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Face Memory

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12

    Score range 0 - 48. Higher score indicates better visual face memory.

  15. Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Verbal Paired Memory

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12

    Score range 0 - 32. Higher score indicates better verbal memory and learning.

  16. Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Family Pictures I & II

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12

    Score range 0 - 64. Higher score indicates better visual memory and learning.

  17. Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Word Lists I & II

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12

    Score range 0 - 36. Higher score indicates better verbal memory and learning. For II, recall score range is 0 to 8; recognition score range is 0 to 24.

  18. Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Visual Reproduction I & II

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12

    Score range 0 - 104. Higher score indicates better visual memory. For II, recall score range is 0-104; recognition score range is 0-48.

  19. Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Spatial Span

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12

    Score range 0 - 32. Higher score indicates better spatial memory.

  20. Change in Wechsler Memory Scale III Digit Span

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12

    Score range 0 - 32. Higher score indicates better auditory memory.

  21. Change in Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale III Vocabulary

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12

    Score range 0 - 66. Higher score indicates better vocabulary.

  22. Change in Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale III Digit Symbol

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12

    Score range 0 - 133. Higher score indicates better processing speed.

  23. Change in Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale III Block Design

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12

    Score range 0 - 68. Higher score indicates better visual processing.

  24. Change in Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale III Arithmetic

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12

    Score range 0 - 22. Higher score indicates better mathematical computation ability.

  25. Change in Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale III Matrix Reasoning

    Time frame: Week 0, Week 12

    Score range 0 - 26. Higher score indicates better reasoning.

Sponsors and collaborators

Lead sponsor

National Taiwan University Hospital

Other

Collaborators

  • Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan
  • National Taiwan Science Education Center
  • National Taiwan University

Registry information

Important dates

Study start
2021
Primary completion
2024
Study completion
2024
First posted
May 3, 2022
Registry last updated
Jan 22, 2025

OpenTrials presents study information sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov. The official registry record should be consulted for the latest information.

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This listing is for discovery and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, does not guarantee that a study is recruiting, and does not determine eligibility. Contact the study team and a qualified healthcare professional when considering participation.

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