Effect of speed of processing training on older driver screening measures

Self-administered home-based, computerised speed of processing training using online commercial product "Double Decision" in the BrainHQ suite of cognitive training software. Double Decision involves viewing a scene on the computer and identifying an image that appears briefly at the centre of the scene (either a car or truck). At the same time, the participant must also note the location of a briefly appearing peripheral figure at one of eight possible locations around the central image. During training, the speed of presentation of the images is adaptively reduced (between 500ms and 17ms), depending on the participant's accuracy, and the background is made more visually complex. Training on the Double Decision task results in participants becoming faster at accurately identifying and locating the images. Participants allocated to the intervention arm were asked to complete 10 hours of training over 5 weeks, at 2 hours per week. Researchers conducted weekly phone follow-up of each participant during the intervention in order to provide technical and motivational support. The phone follow-ups were also aimed at maintaining adherence to the intervention, with the researcher using basic motivational techniques such as encouraging training, normalising difficulties, providing advice regarding impediments to training, and reinforcing importance.