Commercial Brain Training: Efficacy, Transfer Effects, and the Influence of Personality Traits: A Study Conducted on Healthy Young Adults.

Florian Scholl,Sören Enge,Matti Gärtner

doi:10.3390/brainsci11081083

Florian Scholl, Sören Enge + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11081083

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Abstract

In the present study, we investigated the effects of a four-week working memory (WM) and attention training program using commercial brain training (Synaptikon GmbH, Berlin). Sixty young healthy adults were assigned to the experimental and active control training programs. The training was conducted in a naturalistic home-based setting, while the pre- and post-examinations were conducted in a controlled laboratory setting. Transfer effects to an untrained WM task and to an untrained episodic memory task were examined. Furthermore, possible influences of personality, i.e., the five-factor model (FFM) traits and need for cognition (NFC), on training outcomes were examined. Additionally, the direct relationship between improvement in single trained tasks and improvement in the transfer tasks was investigated. Our results showed that both training groups significantly increased performance in the WM task, but only the WM training group increased their performance in the episodic memory transfer task. One of the training tasks, a visuospatial WM task, was particularly associated with improvement in the episodic memory task. Neuroticism and conscientiousness showed differential effects on the improvement in training and transfer tasks. It needs to be further examined whether these effects represent training effects or, for example, retest/practice or motivation effects.

Highlights

The digitization of our daily lives is characterized by ever increasing cognitive demands
Brain imaging studies suggest that cognitive brain training promotes neural plasticity and leads to increased activation in task-relevant brain regions [3]
An early study that received much attention suggested that fluid intelligence (Gf) could be improved through working memory (WM) training [5]

Summary

Introduction

The digitization of our daily lives is characterized by ever increasing cognitive demands. Are (commercial) brain training applications really effective, and crucially, is there a transfer from trained to untrained tasks? The study by Jaeggi et al [5] promoted interest in the field and several studies have investigated different forms of training and transfer effects since . Across studies, it appears that the possibility of so-called near transfer, i.e., transfer to untrained tasks, which are similar to the trained one, may exist [10]. Near transfer effects of a WM span training to free recall memory tasks have been observed [14]

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