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The early effects of external and internal strategies on working memory updating training
The mechanisms underlying working memory training remain unclear, but one possibility is that the typically limited transfer effects of this training reflect adoption of successful task-specific strategies. Our pre-registered randomized controlled trial (N = 116) studied the early effects of externa...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5840432/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29511316 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-22396-5 |
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author | Laine, Matti Fellman, Daniel Waris, Otto Nyman, Thomas J. |
author_facet | Laine, Matti Fellman, Daniel Waris, Otto Nyman, Thomas J. |
author_sort | Laine, Matti |
collection | PubMed |
description | The mechanisms underlying working memory training remain unclear, but one possibility is that the typically limited transfer effects of this training reflect adoption of successful task-specific strategies. Our pre-registered randomized controlled trial (N = 116) studied the early effects of externally given vs. internally generated strategies in an updating task (n-back) over a 5-day period with a single 30-minute training session. Three groups were employed: n-back training with strategy instruction (n = 40), n-back training without strategy instruction (n = 37), and passive controls (n = 39). We found that both external and internal strategy use was associated with significantly higher posttest performance on the trained n-back task, and that training with n-back strategy instruction yielded positive transfer on untrained n-back tasks, resembling the transfer pattern typically seen after the ordinary uninstructed 4–6-week working memory training. In the uninstructed participants, the level of detail and type of internally generated n-back strategies at posttest was significantly related to their posttest n-back performance. Our results support the view that adoption of task-specific strategies plays an important role in working memory training outcomes, and that strategy-based effects are apparent right at the start of training. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5840432 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-58404322018-03-13 The early effects of external and internal strategies on working memory updating training Laine, Matti Fellman, Daniel Waris, Otto Nyman, Thomas J. Sci Rep Article The mechanisms underlying working memory training remain unclear, but one possibility is that the typically limited transfer effects of this training reflect adoption of successful task-specific strategies. Our pre-registered randomized controlled trial (N = 116) studied the early effects of externally given vs. internally generated strategies in an updating task (n-back) over a 5-day period with a single 30-minute training session. Three groups were employed: n-back training with strategy instruction (n = 40), n-back training without strategy instruction (n = 37), and passive controls (n = 39). We found that both external and internal strategy use was associated with significantly higher posttest performance on the trained n-back task, and that training with n-back strategy instruction yielded positive transfer on untrained n-back tasks, resembling the transfer pattern typically seen after the ordinary uninstructed 4–6-week working memory training. In the uninstructed participants, the level of detail and type of internally generated n-back strategies at posttest was significantly related to their posttest n-back performance. Our results support the view that adoption of task-specific strategies plays an important role in working memory training outcomes, and that strategy-based effects are apparent right at the start of training. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-03-06 /pmc/articles/PMC5840432/ /pubmed/29511316 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-22396-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Laine, Matti Fellman, Daniel Waris, Otto Nyman, Thomas J. The early effects of external and internal strategies on working memory updating training |
title | The early effects of external and internal strategies on working memory updating training |
title_full | The early effects of external and internal strategies on working memory updating training |
title_fullStr | The early effects of external and internal strategies on working memory updating training |
title_full_unstemmed | The early effects of external and internal strategies on working memory updating training |
title_short | The early effects of external and internal strategies on working memory updating training |
title_sort | early effects of external and internal strategies on working memory updating training |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5840432/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29511316 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-22396-5 |
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