Working memory is a higher cognitive construct with limited capacity responsible for maintaining and processing relevant information required in everyday activities proceeded in a goal-directed fashion (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974; Baddeley, 2012; Baddeley, Finch and Allen, 2021). For instance, working memory is involved in situation when someone ask to provide two last instruction points for the second stage of an activity such as a game. Information is being download from long term memory to process it in working memory to perform a task.
Results from earlier studies demonstrate strong and consistent association between working memory measures and other higher order cognitive constructs i.e., reasoning (Kane & Engle, 2002), fluid intelligence (Chuderski, 2013; Oberauer et al., 2005), and attention (Unsworth, Fukuda, Awh, & Vogel, 2014). It has been demonstrated that these constructs play a crucial role in learning outcomes, everyday life abilities such as reading comprehension, math, and problem solving (Shah & Miyake, 1999; Diamond & Ling, 2020). It is also well established from a variety of studies (e.g., McCabe, 2010), that working memory capacity measures strongly correlate (r=.97) with executive functions (EFs). Executive functions are a set of high-level control processes required by individual to successfully thrive in the real world. Family of executive functions include abilities such as updating, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility (set shifting) (Stievano & Valeri 2013; Diamond, 2015; Friedman & Miyake, 2018;) is responsible for individual’s self-regulation in goal directed behaviour, due to its influence on low-level processes (Friedman & Miyake, 2018), in each aspect of human existence, from social behaviour through academic achievements (Diamond, 2015). EFs are fragile and prone to external environment, and impairment to any of EFs’ abilities impacts on individual’s life quality. Thus, not surprisingly many researchers have been focusing on a training on working memory domain that would help to expand WM capacity to the point of achievable generalized long-lasting effects contributing to daily life activities (Klingber et al., 2002; 2005).
Within the last two decades, working memory training has become a hot topic in many areas of research due to consistent search for an intervention that would at least revert some cognitive impairments and deficits in clinical population that would to some extent replace intervention in the form of medication, and to help healthy children and adolescents to increase academic performance, as well as work performance in healthy adults due to high demands of everyday life.
Evidence from a number of experimental studies has established that WMT has become a promising intervention to increase WM capacity transferring to improvements in attention in children who suffer from ADHD (Beck, et al., 2010; Green et al., 2012; Egeland, 2013; Grooper et al., 2014., Bigorra et al., 2015), enhancing WM and attention in individuals whose cognition has been compromised by a stroke (Westerberg et al., 2007; Lundqvist et al., 2010; Johansson et al., 2012; Åkerlund et al., 2013; Björkdahl et al., 2013; Peers, 2018), improving cognitive deficits in children with neurological conditions (Di Lieto et al., 2021), improving WM and attention in childhood cancer survivors who suffer cognitive issues on developing brain due to cancer treatment (Hardy, 2012; Conklin, 2015; 2017; Carlsson-Green, 2017), improving fluid intelligence (Jaeggi, et al., 2008; 2010), and enhance academic achievements and intellectual attainment (e.g. Bergman-Nutley & Klingberg, 2014; Karbach et al., 2014; Berger et al. 2020).
However, many other studies trying to replicate those successful results have failed to show any significant advantages of using WMT on cognitive domain other than within domain of WM (e.g., Holmes et al., 2009; Chacko et. al., 2013; Dunning et al., 2013; Yin et al., 2015; Partanen et al. 2015; Fälth et al., 2015; Roberts et al. 2016), even though a study was said to be a true replication of a successful study, as it was shown by Chooi and Thompson (2012) unsuccessfully replicating original study of Jaeggi and colleagues (2008).
References
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I am an experimental psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist, working as a PhD researcher in the Centre for Cognition, Computation and Modelling at Birkbeck, University of London. My work investigates the architecture of working memory, how our highest cognitive functions develop and change across the lifespan, and the design of interventions to support cognitive health, particularly in ageing.
My professional foundation in psychology and cognitive neuroscience is built upon over fifteen years of continuous, hands-on research and applied practice. This extensive trajectory is formally validated by a portfolio of over 245 accredited Continuing Professional Development and Continuing Medical Education certificates, reflecting a sustained and profound dedication to expertise.
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