人口老化已是全球趨勢，如何維持高齡者的生活品質更成為了近來的熱門議題。而「工作記憶」作為人類最重要也最受年齡影響的認知功能之一，一直吸引著科學家或臨床研究者們找出解決其退化的方法。由於視覺空間工作記憶受年齡的衝擊比語音工作記憶更為明顯，本研究旨在探討視覺空間工作記憶作業在高齡者身上的訓練效果，利用視覺空間工作記憶作業進行訓練，並以中央執行功能測驗、與訓練不同的視覺空間工作記憶測驗、語音工作記憶測驗等三者當作效標檢驗訓練效果。研究結果顯示經過為期四周共十次的訓練後，視覺空間工作記憶有顯著的直接訓練效果，然而語音工作記憶卻在工作記憶測驗效果未達顯著的情況下有顯著改善，與研究假設所預期的語音工作記憶表現因視覺空間工作記憶作業應用到執行功能而改善有出入。可能的原因來自於執行功能測驗與訓練作業的相似性低於語音工作記憶與訓練作業的相似性、控制組測驗設計，或是執行功能其實是個可切割為語音及視覺空間兩個獨立部分的系統，因此訓練作業與效標作業並未動用相同的執行功能。縱然執行功能進步未達顯著，所有的後測校正平均數表現依舊顯示訓練組表現較控制組佳的趨勢，支持高齡者依然具有認知彈性，並且視覺空間工作記憶訓練在高齡者身上確實具有一定的效果。

Population Aging has been a world trend and how to keep the quality of life in old age has also been a popular issue. As one of human’s most essential and one of the most sensitive cognitive functions that would be affected by age, scientists or clinics have been trying to find out the solution of age-related decline of “working memory” for a while. Through early studies, visual-spatial working memory (VSWM) is more sensitive to age than verbal working (VWM) memory. So the major purpose of this research is to figure out the effect of VSWM training in elders. In addition to VSWM tasks, executive function (EF) tests and VWM tests are also chosen to be criterion tests. The result shows that after 10 sessions of training, the direct training effect is found in VSWM performance. Against the hypothesis, VWM performance improves significantly even EF test doesn’t show statistical significance. One possible reason is that the similarity between EF tests and training tasks is lower than verbal test and training tasks. The design of control group could be another factor. Or, it is because that EF is modality dependent, which means it can be separated into verbal and visual-spatial parts. So, there’s no overlapping use of EF on training and criterion tests. Although EF performance doesn’t show significantly improves, all adjusted mean score of posttests show that the improvement of training group is larger than control group. We can assume that cognitive plasticity can still be found in elder people and VSWM training could positively influence the whole cognitive functions of elders to a certain extent.

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