In the behavioral WM training researches, transfer of training gains to trained or untrained tasks has always been the central concern. Despite the considerable amount of literature reporting the benefits of the aforementioned method 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, a number of studies demonstrate its limitation in transfer effect 15, 37, 47, 48. The successful implementation of the method of loci strategy depends on the creation of a familiar visuo-spatial mnemonic environment filled with landmarks, imagined navigation whereby location is paired with one or more to-be-remembered items when encoding, and “mentally walking” through the created environment again to sequentially retrieve those items 24, 25, 37. Although the method of loci, also called memory palace technique 23, 24, 38, is one of the most prevalent strategies 24, 25. Multiple types of strategies such as method of loci, rehearsal, imagery, associations, categorization are regarded as effective mnemonic strategies 37. Strategy-based memory training on the other hand refers to improving memory performance by applying mnemonic strategies which contributes to information encoding and retrieval 13, 36. Therefore, more evidence is needed to support n-back training induced performance effect reliable transference to other cognitive tasks.
However, some inconsistent results indicate that failures of positive transfer of training to other unrelated WM tasks still exist 33, 34, 35. Numerous studies have linked n-back training to improvement of WM capacity 18, 19, 26, 29, 30, 31, near transfer to performance of structurally similar WM tasks 22, 30, 32, and even far transfer to fluid intelligence 18, 19, 22, 31, 32.
Adhd digit span serial#
The dual n-back task, which is one of the most frequently utilized experimental paradigms for process-based training 19, 28, 29, involves simultaneous serial presentation of auditory and visual stimuli that requires participants to make a specific response on either the identity or location when the current stimulus matches the one presented n trials back 18, 19, 20, 28. Process-based memory training mostly focuses on enhancing capacities related to operations such as processing speed and executive functions 7, 15, 26, 27. The two major memory training approaches are: process-based memory training 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 and strategy-based memory training 23, 24, 25. Encouragingly, increasing evidence on brain plasticity demonstrate that memory performance improvement can be achieved via memory training 2, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. Moreover, deficits in WM are usually associated with several neuropsychiatric disorders, for instance, cognitive impairment 5, Parkinson’s disease (PD) 6, 7, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) 2, 8, 9, Alzheimer’s disease (AD) 7, 10, 11 and schizophrenia 11, 12. Although WM plays an indispensable role for humans in aspects of daily life, academic performance and work, its capacity displays limitation. Working memory (WM) facilitates the process of temporary storage and manipulation of the information necessary for most higher level cognitive tasks, such as learning, reasoning, and comprehension 1, 2, 3, 4. In conclusion, while both techniques can be used as effective training methods to improve WM, the dual n-back task training method, perhaps has a more prominent transfer effect than that of method of loci. For untrained tasks, both training groups enhanced performance on digit-span task, while on change detection task, significant improvement was only observed in NBG. Our results showed that both training groups separately improved WM capacity on respective trained task. Therefore, the current study recruited three groups of young adults to investigate the memory training transference, with N-back group (NBG) (n = 50) training on dual n-back task, Memory Palace group (MPG) (n = 50) on method of loci, and a blank control group (BCG) (n = 48) receiving no training. Working memory (WM) training is a prevalent intervention for multiple cognitive deficits, however, the transfer effects to other cognitive tasks from gains in WM induced by different training techniques still remains controversial.
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