Does Working Memory Training Promote New Memory Strategies?
Practicing challenging computerized memory tasks improves working memory because it prompts people to spontaneously adopt better strategies like grouping information.
Source
Does working memory training promote the use of strategies on untrained working memory tasks?
What they did
The researchers recruited a group of English-fluent college students and assigned them to 3 conditions: adaptive training, non-adaptive placebo training, or a no-training control. Those in the training groups completed 10 sessions of cognitive tasks over a span of a few weeks. The researchers administered 4 subtests of a standardized working memory assessment before and after training, and interviewed participants immediately after each test to catalog their exact mental strategies.
What they found
The adaptive training group showed significantly greater improvements in visuospatial short-term memory (effect size 1.47) and both verbal (0.87) and visuospatial (0.73) working memory compared to the control groups. These performance increases were closely tied to strategy shifts, with at least 50% more participants in the adaptive group spontaneously developing and reporting a grouping strategy after training.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Because the study relied on retrospective interviews, it does not rule out that participants misremembered their strategy use or fell victim to demand characteristics. Additionally, the small sample size of only 14 participants in the final analysis of the adaptive group limits the statistical power needed to definitively prove strategy use caused the memory gains. Finally, it does not demonstrate if these task-specific strategic improvements translate to broader, real-world academic or everyday cognitive tasks.
Key terms
- Working memory
- The cognitive system responsible for the temporary maintenance and processing of information during complex cognitive activities.
- Adaptive training
- A computerized training method where task difficulty continuously adjusts to match the participant's current performance level.
- Grouping
- The voluntary mental segmentation of individual memory items into fewer, larger blocks to make them easier to recall.
- Short-term memory
- The cognitive system used for the temporary storage of information without additional processing or manipulation.
- Strategy mediation hypothesis
- The theory that differences in memory task performance are predicted by the specific strategies individuals choose to use.
- Active control group
- A comparison group in a study that undergoes a placebo intervention designed to mimic the active training format without the adaptive challenge.
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Quiz yourself
How is working memory defined in the introduction of this paper?
Common questions
Does adaptive memory training actually increase our physical brain capacity?
Not necessarily. The results suggest training helps people use their existing memory resources more efficiently by developing strategies, rather than physically expanding core memory capacity.
How quickly can people see improvements from this training?
This study showed that just 10 training sessions were enough to significantly improve working memory performance, which is shorter than the 20-session protocols typically used in other research.
Did the participants receive explicit instructions on how to use grouping strategies?
No, the computerized training program did not teach any strategies. Participants spontaneously developed the grouping technique on their own due to the challenging nature of the adaptive tasks.
Why didn't the training help with verbal short-term memory?
Verbal short-term memory tasks require simple storage with minimal executive attention. Training appears to primarily boost tasks that place heavy demands on executive processes, where strategy deployment is most useful.
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