Abstract
During the past decade, working memory training has attracted much interest. However, the training outcomes have varied between studies and methodological problems have hampered the interpretation of results. The current study examined transfer after working memory updating training by employing an extensive battery of pre-post cognitive measures with a focus on near transfer. Thirty-one healthy Finnish young adults were randomized into either a working memory training group or an active control group. The working memory training group practiced with three working memory tasks, while the control group trained with three commercial computer games with a low working memory load. The participants trained thrice a week for five weeks, with one training session lasting about 45 minutes. Compared to the control group, the working memory training group showed strongest transfer to an n-back task, followed by working memory updating, which in turn was followed by active working memory capacity. Our results support the view that working memory training produces near transfer effects, and that the degree of transfer depends on the cognitive overlap between the training and transfer measures.
Highlights
Working memory (WM) refers to a temporary memory storage system that maintains and manipulates currently active information [1]
We set two main aims for the current study: 1) to contribute to the ongoing debate on the transfer effects of WM training and 2) to evaluate whether the magnitude of transfer gain effect sizes of the pre-post measures could be related to the cognitive overlap between the pre-post and training measures
To take into account recent methodological criticism concerning some of the earlier WM training research, we implemented an active control group, an adaptive training regime, and composite scores to measure cognitive constructs
Summary
Working memory (WM) refers to a temporary memory storage system that maintains and manipulates currently active information [1]. These include passive (only involving maintenance) and active (maintenance and manipulation) WM capacity, (see e.g., [33,34,35]), the updating function, shifting between mental sets, and the inhibition of irrelevant material during WM processing All of these aspects of WM performance were assessed in the present study. We did not hypothesize a specific ranking order for the transfer effects, but expected that the pre-post measures being most similar to the training regime in terms of their cognitive demands would show strongest transfer. Our main aims were as follows: 1) to search for transfer effects of WM updating training with a setup that takes into account recent methodological criticisms and 2) to evaluate the transfer gain effect sizes of the pre-post measures on the basis of the notion that greater cognitive overlap between the training and transfer measures should produce greater transfer
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