

Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory - sayemm
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/04/25/0801268105.full.pdf

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tokenadult
I just printed out the linked paper and read it. It reminds me of other papers
I have read in the behavioral genetics seminar of the psychology department of
our local university.

<http://www.psych.umn.edu/courses/fall10/psy8935/default.htm>

In the seminar, the assembled faculty members, graduate students, and
interested members of the general public (I am in the last category) discuss
research papers in psychology and try to make sense of what new papers are
claiming. We look at the study methodologies to see if sample sizes are
adequate, control groups are adequately assembled, and statistical analysis of
the data has been done properly. If my recollection is correct, this
particular paper was mentioned at least in passing at one of the seminar
sessions last school year, when I began attending the seminar.

Looking at all the issues that one would look at while examining a research
paper,

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

it seems to me that this paper suggests an intriguing area for further
research, but I would be doubtful of taking this to the bank by signing up for
the training course mentioned in the paper in the expectation of increasing my
IQ score (much less, in the expectation of increasing my performance in the
real world outside the testing room). Working memory plainly has something to
do with real world cognitive performance--all the intelligence researchers are
looking at that issue these days--

<http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=working+memory+IQ>

and working memory plainly can be improved by some forms of training. But
there is a long way to go before we can say with confidence which form of
training will have the most impact at least expense and inconvenience for the
greatest number of human beings grappling with real-world cognitive tasks.

~~~
barry-cotter
If you're going to read a paper on n-back you should read gwern's FAQ on it.

<http://www.gwern.net/N-back%20FAQ.html>

~~~
gwern
For tokenadult, I would particularly point out
<http://www.gwern.net/N-back%20FAQ.html#criticism>

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stretchwithme
This is interesting:

"The adaptive character of the training leads to continual engagement of
executive processes while only minimally allowing the development of automatic
processes and task-specific strategies."

In Iconclast, Gregory Burns talks about 2 pathways in the brain, one used for
tasks we know how to do and one for new tasks. Using the latter, he says, is
when we are being creative. And he presents ways to use the latter more
frequently.

In meditation, one of the most important lessons is to realize that there is
the thinking brain, which is the conditioned mind and is concerned with time,
the past and the future.

And there is the listener, the one that gets a chance to solve problems when
the thinker gives up. We can't even see how it works. There is no visible
linear thought process. The brain is not using that automatic pathway. It
lives in and pays attention to the present, not what happened in the past or
what may someday happen. It is about being present.

So training this listener part of the brain, the unconditioned part, makes
sense to me. We've all known people that are stuck repeating conditioned
behaviors. There's no doubt this interferes with achievement.

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pepsi_can
Here is a link to BrainWorkshop. It's a dual N-Back game based on Jaeggi's
work.

<http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/>

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briandw
I wrote an iPhone app based on this. It did really well in the early days of
the app store. I have since given up updating it and made it free. Enjoy.

<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iq-boost/id286574399?mt=8>

