The SIMA-project: effects of 1 year cognitive and psychomotor training on cognitive abilities of the elderly

In an interdisciplinary project on maintaining and supporting independent living in old age, (a) competence training, (b) memory training and (c) psychomotor training as well as (d) combined competence and psychomotor training and (e) combined memory and psychomotor training was performed with n = 309 elderly of 75 to 89 years of age for 9 months. Regardless of treatment conditions, an age-related decline of health and subjective well-being was found 1 year after the end of the training. The specific training measures each led to highly significant specific improvements of the trained functions. A favorable influence of competence training on everyday coping and hence on active strategies for staying independent as well as of memory training on all cognitive functions and especially on memory performance was found. While global psychomotor performance was not significantly improved, effects of psychomotor training on specific functions were detected. In addition, the combined psychomotor and memory training led to an improvement of psychomotor performance and to a reduction of symptoms of dementia, even though neither psychomotor training alone nor memory training alone resulted in such effects. Neurophysiological changes leading to a provision of reserve-capacity of CNS-performance are among other effects assumed as an explanation.