Cognitive Training & Brain Teasers Can Increase Openness Among Older Adults

Brain Teasers Make Seniors More Open to New Ven­tures (med­page today):

- ” A cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram that includ­ed Sudoku and cross­word puz­zles made old­er adults more open to new expe­ri­ences, accord­ing to a pre­lim­i­nary study.”

- “Old­er adults under­go changes in per­son­al­i­ty, includ­ing shifts in open­ness or will­ing­ness to seek out new and cog­ni­tive­ly chal­leng­ing expe­ri­ences. A num­ber of inter­ven­tions have been designed to enrich cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing in old­er adults, but lit­tle has been done to devel­op open­ness, the authors explained.”

Study: “Can an old dog learn (and want to expe­ri­ence) new tricks? cog­ni­tive train­ing increas­es open­ness to expe­ri­ence in old­er adults” (Psy­chol­o­gy and Aging).

Abstract: The present study inves­ti­gat­ed whether an inter­ven­tion aimed to increase cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty in old­er adults also changes the per­son­al­i­ty trait of open­ness to expe­ri­ence. Old­er adults com­plet­ed a 16-week pro­gram in induc­tive rea­son­ing train­ing sup­ple­ment­ed by week­ly cross­word and Sudoku puz­zles. Changes in open­ness to expe­ri­ence were mod­eled across four assess­ments over 30 weeks using latent growth curve mod­els. Results indi­cate that par­tic­i­pants in the inter­ven­tion con­di­tion increased in the trait of open­ness com­pared with a wait­list con­trol group. The study is one of the first to demon­strate that per­son­al­i­ty traits can change through nonpsy­chophar­mo­co­log­i­cal interventions.

Ques­tion: are you open to try some brain teasers?