Abstract
•What is the primary question addressed by this study?The study addressed the question of whether racial and ethnic status, as well as assessment language, of community- dwelling older people predicted poorer baseline performance on a computerized functional skills program assessing technology-based everyday functional tasks and whether any baseline disadvantages were overcome with skills training.•What is the main finding of this study?Monolingual Spanish speakers and Black English speakers had the poorest baseline performance. This baseline disadvantage was overcome with training and these two subsamples had the largest overall training gains over a 12-week period.•What is the meaning of the finding?These findings suggest that baseline performance disadvantages in technology-related everyday living do not reflect the inability to learn complex technology related skills. Baseline disadvantages are likely due to lack of opportunities and experience which can be reversed with targeted training
Research consistently finds that lower baseline performance predicts greater gains with computerized training. Lower baseline performance can originate from many factors, including educational and environmental disadvantages, leading to reduced exposure to functional tasks. Across six computerized technology-related functional skills, baseline performance and training gains were compared across race and training language.
Randomized clinical trial.
14 Community centers in New York City and Miami.
Participants aged 60-90 with diverse ethnic (52% Latinx) and racial (27% Black) status, trained in in English (60%) or Spanish (40%).
Remotely delivered computerized cognitive and skills training (FUNSATTM) for an hour twice a week for up to 12 weeks.
Completion time across all 6 tests pre and post training.
The total sample included 42 Black English Speakers, 52 White English speakers, and 61 Spanish speakers. Spanish speakers had the poorest baseline performance on all tasks, underperforming English-speaking Latinx participants. However, Spanish speaking participants had the largest training gains. Lower MOCA scores predicted lower baseline performance and greater training gains across samples. Educational attainment predicted training gains only in the Spanish speakers. Despite education effects in this group, all improvements were statistically significant with large effect sizes.
Lower baseline performance of functional skills was a positive predictor of training gains and was efficiently reversed through training. Even participants who initially appeared more impaired achieved substantial gains, congruent with the results reported in psychiatric populations. Critically, low baseline competence should not be interpreted as reflecting negatively on potential training gains.