The Pursuit of Effective Working Memory Training: a Pre-registered Randomised Controlled Trial with a Novel Varied Training Protocol

Abstract

Working memory (WM) training, typically entailing repetitive practice with one or two tasks, has mostly yielded only limited task-specific transfer effects. We developed and tested a new WM training approach where the task paradigm, stimulus type, and predictability of the stimulus sequence were constantly altered during the 4-week training period. We expected that this varied training protocol would generate more extensive transfer by facilitating the use of more general strategies that could be applied to a range of WM tasks. Pre-post transfer effects following varied training (VT group, n = 60) were compared against traditional training (TT group, training a single adaptive WM task, n = 63), and active controls (AC, n = 65). As expected, TT evidenced strong task-specific near transfer as compared to AC. In turn, VT exhibited task-specific near transfer only on one of the measures, and only as compared to the TT group. Critically, no evidence for task-general near transfer or far transfer effects was observed. In sum, the present form of VT failed to demonstrate broader transfer. Nevertheless, as VT has met with success in other cognitive domains, future studies should probe if and how it would be possible to design WM training protocols that promote structural learning where common features of specific tasks would be identified and utilised when selecting strategies for novel memory tasks.

Self-reported strategy use in working memory tasks

“…2 h 15 min) on our SOILE internet testing platform with their home computers or similar. In addition to the WM tasks and questionnaire items, the testing session included other cognitive tasks and questionnaires not reported here (for details, see Ritakallio et al 5 ).…”

“…To address these issues, the present study analysed self-reported strategy use in a number of WM tasks, its relationship with objective task performance, and its variation as a function of stimulus type and paradigm. We attempted an internal replication by performing these analyses in two previously acquired datasets 5 , 6 .…”

“…This should shed light on factors that govern the very wide inter- and intraindividual variation that characterises spontaneous strategy use in WM tasks. Our data stem from the pretests of two large-scale preregistered WM training experiments ( https://osf.io/c9ygt 5 ; https://aspredicted.org/r7qs9.pdf 6 ).…”