Brain Training

Question 1

What is brain training?

Answer 1

Cognitive training involving intensive mental exercises targeting core cognitive skills such as attention, memory, reasoning, auditory/visual processing, and processing speed. It aims to strengthen the systems that support learning, reading, and problem-solving.

Question 2

What was the aim of Carpenter et al. (LearningRx)?

Answer 2

To investigate whether LearningRx cognitive training improves intellectual ability in children aged 8–14 by strengthening specific cognitive skills.

Question 3

What was the method in Carpenter et al.?

Answer 3

39 children (20 training, 19 waitlist control) received 3–4 one-to-one 90-minute sessions per week for 15 weeks. Skills targeted included auditory analysis, long-term memory, and visual processing. Pre- and post-tests assessed cognitive improvements.

Question 4

What did Carpenter et al. find?

Answer 4

The training group improved significantly on all measures except attention. Improvements were greater than those in the control group.

Question 5

What were limitations of Carpenter et al.?

Answer 5

Small sample; potential demand characteristics; placebo effects from receiving 1:1 attention. An active control group was needed to rule out expectation effects.

Question 6

What is Lumosity?

Answer 6

A commercial brain-training app claiming to boost cognitive functioning, used by over 100 million people worldwide.

Question 7

What is Elevate?

Answer 7

A brain-training app claiming to improve productivity, earning power, communication, and self-confidence.

Question 8

What did Thorndike & Woodworth (1901) study?

Answer 8

Participants practiced identifying and marking words containing specific letters. Performance was compared between the first and final pages.

Question 9

What did Thorndike & Woodworth find?

Answer 9

Large improvement (about 62% faster, with fewer errors) on the practiced task, showing that practice yields task-specific gains.

Question 10

What key issue did Thorndike & Woodworth reveal?

Answer 10

Training did not generalise well to unpracticed tasks (e.g., different letter combinations). Transfer occurs mainly when tasks share ‘identical elements’.

Question 11

What did Olesen et al. (2003) study?

Answer 11

Eight participants completed adaptive working-memory training for 5 weeks while undergoing weekly fMRI scans to observe training-related brain changes.

Question 12

What did Olesen et al. find?

Answer 12

Training increased activation in brain regions supporting working memory, demonstrating neural plasticity but not necessarily broad cognitive transfer.

Question 13

Why is ‘the brain is like a muscle’ considered a myth?

Answer 13

Training one cognitive skill does not make all cognitive abilities stronger. Gains are usually narrow and specific to the trained tasks, unlike global muscle strengthening.

Question 14

What did Jaeggi et al. study?

Answer 14

Thirty-four adults received 8, 12, 17, or 19 days of dual n-back working-memory training, with difficulty adjusted based on performance.

Question 15

What did Jaeggi et al. find?

Answer 15

Training improved n-back performance and was associated with higher fluid-intelligence scores. More training days produced larger gains.

Question 16

What were criticisms of Jaeggi et al.?

Answer 16

Small sample size, lack of active control, and failures to replicate the intelligence gains in later studies.

Question 17

What did De Simoni & Von Bastian study?

Answer 17

197 adults trained in one of three conditions (updating, binding, or visual search control) across twenty 40-minute sessions. They measured training, near transfer, and far transfer.

Question 18

What did De Simoni & Von Bastian find?

Answer 18

Participants improved on the specific task they practiced, but there was no evidence of near transfer between working-memory tasks or far transfer to reasoning, shifting, or inhibition.

Question 19

What is near transfer?

Answer 19

Improvement on tasks that are very similar to the trained task (e.g., one working-memory task improving another working-memory task).

Question 20

What is far transfer?

Answer 20

Improvement on different cognitive domains such as fluid intelligence, reasoning, or executive control after training a specific task.

Question 21

What did the Soveri et al. meta-analysis examine?

Answer 21

Over 200 training effects from randomized, active-controlled trials on n-back training, working memory, fluid intelligence, and cognitive control in healthy adults.

Question 22

What did Soveri et al. find?

Answer 22

N-back training reliably improves performance on n-back tasks (near transfer), but far-transfer effects are very small (effect sizes around 0.2, explaining only about 1% of variance).

Question 23

What is the scientific consensus on brain training?

Answer 23

Brain training improves performance on the specific tasks that are trained, but there is little convincing evidence that it produces broad improvements in general intelligence or everyday cognitive functioning.