The early effects of external and internal strategies on working memory updating training

Laine, M., Fellman, D., Waris, O. and Nyman, T. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6409-2528 (2018) The early effects of external and internal strategies on working memory updating training. Scientific Reports, 8. 4045. ISSN 2045-2322 doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-22396-5

Abstract/Summary

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.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/118720
Identification Number/DOI	10.1038/s41598-018-22396-5
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	No Reading authors. Back catalogue items Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Psychology
Publisher	Nature Publishing Group
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