Brain game research

General Memory Chat
1

I just read an article on the Big Think site that will likely be of interest to many on here as it was related to improving working memory which you can find here http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/want-to-boost-your-brain-power-try-this-exercise-developed-at-johns-hopkins?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#link_time=1508605870

Has anyone used the games mentioned; “Dual n back” or “Complex Span”?

2

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2013/02/14/working-memory-training-does-not-live-up-to-the-hype/

The above link contains a general conclusion on brain-training games, as follows:

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The results were absolutely clear. Working memory training leads to short-term gains on working memory performance on tests that are the same as, or similar to, those used in the training. “However,” Melby-Lervåg and Hulme write, “there is no evidence that working memory training produces generalisable gains to the other skills that have been investigated (verbal ability, word decoding, arithmetic), even when assessments take place immediately after training.”

There was a modest, short-term benefit of the training on non-verbal intelligence but this disappeared when only considering the studies with a robust design (i.e. those that randomised participants across conditions and which enrolled control participants in some kind of activity). Similarly, there was a modest benefit of the training on a test of attentional control, but this disappeared at follow-up.
[end]

There’s a statement on what I refer to as the “Lumosity effect”, in other words you might improve at the specific game that you are currently playing, but there’s no transfer of benefit to some other game, or to some general cognitive ability - such as working memory:

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All of this suggests that working memory training isn’t increasing people’s working memory capacity in such a way that they benefit whenever they engage in any kind of task that leans on working memory. Rather, people who complete the training simply seem to have improved at the specific kinds of exercises used in the training, or possibly even just at computer tasks – effects which, anyway, wear off over time.
[end]

The tenth paragraph in the above link is a link to a PDF that gives all the meta-results. N-back is mentioned in the table at the end of the PDF.

You will find several references to N-back. There are other well-known superstars such as:

Jungle Memory
Cognifit
CogMed
Memory Booster

Lumosity was not included, presumably because of its bad reputation.