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Can cognitive training capitalise on near transfer effects? Limited evidence of transfer following online inhibition training in a randomised-controlled trial

Despite early promise, cognitive training research has failed to deliver consistent real-world benefits and questions have been raised about the experimental rigour of many studies. Several meta-analyses have suggested that there is little to no evidence for transfer of training from computerised ta...

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Autores principales: Harris, David J., Wilson, Mark R., Chillingsworth, Kieran, Mitchell, Gabriella, Smith, Sarah, Arthur, Tom, Brock, Kirsty, Vine, Samuel J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10637678/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37948381
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293657
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author Harris, David J.
Wilson, Mark R.
Chillingsworth, Kieran
Mitchell, Gabriella
Smith, Sarah
Arthur, Tom
Brock, Kirsty
Vine, Samuel J.
author_facet Harris, David J.
Wilson, Mark R.
Chillingsworth, Kieran
Mitchell, Gabriella
Smith, Sarah
Arthur, Tom
Brock, Kirsty
Vine, Samuel J.
author_sort Harris, David J.
collection PubMed
description Despite early promise, cognitive training research has failed to deliver consistent real-world benefits and questions have been raised about the experimental rigour of many studies. Several meta-analyses have suggested that there is little to no evidence for transfer of training from computerised tasks to real-world skills. More targeted training approaches that aim to optimise performance on specific tasks have, however, shown more promising effects. In particular, the use of inhibition training for improving shoot/don’t-shoot decision-making has returned positive far transfer effects. In the present work, we tested whether an online inhibition training task could generate near and mid-transfer effects in the context of response inhibition tasks. As there has been relatively little testing of retention effects in the literature to date, we also examined whether any benefits would persist over a 1-month interval. In a pre-registered, randomised-controlled trial, participants (n = 73) were allocated to either an inhibition training programme (six training sessions of a visual search task with singleton distractor) or a closely matched active control task (that omitted the distractor element). We assessed near transfer to a Flanker task, and mid-transfer to a computerised shoot/don’t-shoot task. There was evidence for a near transfer effect, but no evidence for mid-transfer. There was also no evidence that the magnitude of training improvement was related to transfer task performance. This finding adds to the growing body of literature questioning the effectiveness of cognitive training. Given previous positive findings, however, there may still be value in continuing to explore the extent to which cognitive training can capitalise on near or mid-transfer effects for performance optimisation.
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spelling pubmed-106376782023-11-11 Can cognitive training capitalise on near transfer effects? Limited evidence of transfer following online inhibition training in a randomised-controlled trial Harris, David J. Wilson, Mark R. Chillingsworth, Kieran Mitchell, Gabriella Smith, Sarah Arthur, Tom Brock, Kirsty Vine, Samuel J. PLoS One Research Article Despite early promise, cognitive training research has failed to deliver consistent real-world benefits and questions have been raised about the experimental rigour of many studies. Several meta-analyses have suggested that there is little to no evidence for transfer of training from computerised tasks to real-world skills. More targeted training approaches that aim to optimise performance on specific tasks have, however, shown more promising effects. In particular, the use of inhibition training for improving shoot/don’t-shoot decision-making has returned positive far transfer effects. In the present work, we tested whether an online inhibition training task could generate near and mid-transfer effects in the context of response inhibition tasks. As there has been relatively little testing of retention effects in the literature to date, we also examined whether any benefits would persist over a 1-month interval. In a pre-registered, randomised-controlled trial, participants (n = 73) were allocated to either an inhibition training programme (six training sessions of a visual search task with singleton distractor) or a closely matched active control task (that omitted the distractor element). We assessed near transfer to a Flanker task, and mid-transfer to a computerised shoot/don’t-shoot task. There was evidence for a near transfer effect, but no evidence for mid-transfer. There was also no evidence that the magnitude of training improvement was related to transfer task performance. This finding adds to the growing body of literature questioning the effectiveness of cognitive training. Given previous positive findings, however, there may still be value in continuing to explore the extent to which cognitive training can capitalise on near or mid-transfer effects for performance optimisation. Public Library of Science 2023-11-10 /pmc/articles/PMC10637678/ /pubmed/37948381 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293657 Text en © 2023 Harris et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Harris, David J.
Wilson, Mark R.
Chillingsworth, Kieran
Mitchell, Gabriella
Smith, Sarah
Arthur, Tom
Brock, Kirsty
Vine, Samuel J.
Can cognitive training capitalise on near transfer effects? Limited evidence of transfer following online inhibition training in a randomised-controlled trial
title Can cognitive training capitalise on near transfer effects? Limited evidence of transfer following online inhibition training in a randomised-controlled trial
title_full Can cognitive training capitalise on near transfer effects? Limited evidence of transfer following online inhibition training in a randomised-controlled trial
title_fullStr Can cognitive training capitalise on near transfer effects? Limited evidence of transfer following online inhibition training in a randomised-controlled trial
title_full_unstemmed Can cognitive training capitalise on near transfer effects? Limited evidence of transfer following online inhibition training in a randomised-controlled trial
title_short Can cognitive training capitalise on near transfer effects? Limited evidence of transfer following online inhibition training in a randomised-controlled trial
title_sort can cognitive training capitalise on near transfer effects? limited evidence of transfer following online inhibition training in a randomised-controlled trial
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10637678/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37948381
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293657
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