Working memory training won ’ t make you more intelligent

By Emma Young What can you do to make yourself smarter? All kinds of interventions have been designed and tried, mostly with little success. However, some studies have suggested that training working memory is effective. This has led to it becoming the most popular form of intelligence-training intervention, write the authors of new paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition. There have been mixed results in this area though, and, the team argues, potential problems with the methodology of some previous studies, making it hard to draw firm conclusions. (For example, some of the trials that failed to find an effect perhaps involved too little training.) So they set out to run as definitive a trial as possible. The results of their two-year longitudinal study now suggest that while working memory can indeed be improved in typically developing children, this has no impact whatsoever on intelligence. Working memory is the type that you use to consciously hold and manipulate information in your mind. No end of studies have linked better working memory scores to greater “fluid intelligence” — the sort involved in reasoning and learning. (Fluid intelligence is widely viewed as the “key ingredient” in human cognitive abilities, the team notes.) In fact, working memory has been viewed as the underpinning of fluid intelligence for decades. So it’s certainly reasonable to think that improving someone’s work...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Educational Memory Source Type: blogs