Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

A simultaneous examination of two forms of working memory training: Evidence for near transfer only

2016; Springer Science+Business Media; Volume: 44; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3758/s13421-016-0616-9

1532-5946

Meredith Minear, Faith Brasher, Claudia Brandt Guerrero, Mandy Brasher, Andrew R. Moore, Joshua Sukeena,

Cognitive Science and Mapping

The efficacy of working-memory training is a topic of considerable debate, with some studies showing transfer to measures such as fluid intelligence while others have not. We report the results of a study designed to examine two forms of working-memory training, one using a spatial n-back and the other a verbal complex span. Thirty-one undergraduates completed 4 weeks of n-back training and 32 completed 4 weeks of verbal complex span training. We also included two active control groups. One group trained on a non-adaptive version of n-back and the other trained on a real-time strategy video game. All participants completed pre- and post-training measures of a large battery of transfer tasks used to create composite measures of short-term and working memory in both verbal and visuo-spatial domains as well as verbal reasoning and fluid intelligence. We only found clear evidence for near transfer from the spatial n-back training to new forms of n-back, and this was the case for both adaptive and non-adaptive n-back.