The effect of cognitive training in older adults: be aware of CRUNCH.

Cognitive training research has revealed support for both the magnification and compensation accounts, respectively predicting larger or smaller training benefits for individuals already having strong cognitive abilities. A recent study in older adults (OAs) revealed evidence for the Compensation-Related Utilization of Neural Circuits Hypothesis, which best fits a magnification account. Only few studies examined working memory (WM) training gains in OAs as a function of initial executive functioning level. Here, we tracked the progress of high and low functioning OAs across WM training sessions. The high functioning OAs continued to improve their performance on the three training tasks. However, for one of the training tasks, the low functioning participants failed to improve performance or terminated participation in the course of training. The results suggest that during cognitive training, evaluation of the individual's cognitive capacity and performance monitoring are essential to maintain an optimal balance between cognitive resources and task demands.