Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elders
Design
ACTIVE is a randomized, controlled, single-masked trial utilizing a four-group design with three intervention arms and a no-contact control group. DEligibility criteria were established to ensure that the study population would be in good physical and cognitive health at the time of enrollment, yet at risk for cognitive and functional decline. Prior longitudinal studies have demonstrated that significant age-related decline occurs in the mid-sixties for cognitive abilities, the targets of training. In contrast, significant age-related decline on daily function has been shown to occur later than for the targeted mental abilities, occurring for IADLs in the mid seventies to early eighties. Thus, intervention on the cognitive abilities was timed to occur at the normative onset of age-related decline in these abilities, but prior to expected normative decline in the functional outcomes.