Working Memory Training

brain training involves treating…

our brain like a muscle

Transfer for brain training refers to….

improvements in a practiced task leading to improvements in unpracticed tasks

strategy based training involves… for example…

the introduction and acquisition of strategies that are difficult to transfer to other contexts, remembering the order of the planets

process based training involves… for example…

repeated practice of specific tasks targeting cognitive processes assumed to transfer to other contexts, crosswords

functional overlap refers to how transfer is expected if…

practiced and non-practiced tasks share underlying processes

WM training tasks with successful training may be transferred to near transfer tasks, also known as… and perhaps even far transfer tasks, which are…

untrained WM tasks, different but related cognitive abilities

methodological rationale for measuring training effects refers to how performance at… is compared to…

pretest assessment, performance at posttest after training

seminal training studies were conducted by Klingberg et al, who used a… with a variety of WM tasks, for example…

computerised training program, visuospatial WM task and Raven’s Progressive Matrices

seminal training studies were conducted by Klingberg et al, what were the results?

both tasks showed greater difference after intensive training, there is evidence for transfer effects

Klingberg et al developed on their previous study to involve either adaptive WM training or nonadaptive WM training. what does this mean? what were the results?

difficulty changes as you get better in adaptive training but stays the same for nonadaptive training. evidence for transfer effects and larger benefits in adaptive training compared to nonadaptive

despite some significant studies for transfer training effects… due to…

there is inconsistent evidence across many studies, methodological issues and theoretical issues

von Bastian and Oberauer suggested that there were 2 mechanisms of transfer, which are…

enhanced capacity and enhanced efficiency

the enhanced capacity as a mechanism of transfer suggests… which predicts…

that training increases the number of information elements held in WM, the training leads to broad transfer effects

the enhanced efficiency as a mechanism of transfer suggests… which predicts…

that training supports more efficient use of existing capacity through strategies or faster processing, that training leads to selective transfer effects

De Simoni and von Bastian conducted a training study with 20 sessions of WM binding training or WM updating training or active control visual search. This involved changing training and transfer tasks which were near or far transfer.

For Near Transfer results:

The greatest gains were in… and a decrease in gains for…

binding tasks for other binding tasks, binding and updating tasks in visual search tasks

De Simoni and von Bastian conducted a training study with 20 sessions of WM binding training or WM updating training or active control visual search. This involved changing training and transfer tasks which were near or far transfer.

For Far Transfer results: the lower gains were in… and the greatest gain was in speed for…

all 3 tasks, all 3 tasks

De Simoni and von Bastian conducted a training study with 20 sessions of WM binding training or WM updating training or active control visual search. This involved changing training and transfer tasks which were near or far transfer.

This study proved that training did not improve… but showed great improvement in…

WM capacity or efficiency, trained tasks

the magnification hypothesis suggests…

that people with higher abilities will gain more progress

the compensation hypothesis suggests…

that people with lower abilities gain more

Guye et al conducted a study on the difference in training performance between older and younger adults. What was the result in initial task performance, and what was suggested about individual differences in predicting training progress?

younger adults showed magnification of initial task performance, limited evidence for individual differences

Melby-Lervag et al invested intervention-specific factors in a meta-analysis, what was found about Cogmed (training task) in relation to near and far transfer tasks?

relatively large near transfer but relatively larger far transfer