Effects of Education on Executive Functioning and its Trainability

Age-related changes in executive functioning are a main source of cognitive aging. High cognitive reserve, as well as training interventions, have been shown to protect against age-related decline in executive functions. Whether education as one prominent marker of cognitive reserve has a protective effect is, however, ambiguous. Furthermore, little is known about a potential interplay of cognitive reserve and training interventions. The present study, therefore, examines (a) the influence of education on focus-switching as a recently identified executive control process and (b) the impact of education on its trainability. To this end, extreme groups of high- and low-educated younger (age 1935) and older (age 5980) adults were selected from a larger training study on focus-switching. Results show that whereas education influences older adults' cognitive performance in focus-switching in a protective way, no effect of education emerged in younger age participants. Training gains, however, are not affected by educational level in either age group.