lecture 4 - cognitive enhancement

Question 1

brain plasticity

Answer 1

• even short-term practice can result in noticeable changes in brain activity, supporting the idea that the brain is highly adaptable
• this is seen with both physical and mental practice, showing that the mind can change the brain
• plasticity is a normal and ongoing process throughout the lifespan

Question 2

brain plasticity is important because

Answer 2

• Aging: All our brains are aging, so maintaining neuroplasticity is crucial for cognitive health as we grow older.
• Desire for Improvement: Everyone wants to be smarter and perform better cognitively.
• Increased Cognitive Demands: Modern society places more demands on our mental capacities than ever before.
• Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders: Many disorders, like Alzheimer’s disease or ADHD, impact cognition, making it crucial to understand how to improve or maintain cognitive function.

Question 3

cognitive enhancement methods

Answer 3

1. exercise
2. brain stimulation
3. video games/cognitive training
4. food supplements
5. meditation
6. drugs

Question 4

computerized cognitive training

Answer 4

• intended to boost cognition
• a booming business: commercial brain training companies

Question 5

WM training: first findings

Answer 5

• study aimed to investigate if training WM can lead to improvements in fluid intelligence (ability to solve novel problems independently of previously acquired knowledge) with a dual n-back task
• compared with a passive control group
• performance was measured with the Raven’s Advance Progressive Matrices (BOMAT)
• training effect: participants improved their working memory performance over time

Question 6

methodological considerations

Answer 6

• how are non-specific effects controlled for in studies

1. test-retest effects: practice effects
2. placebo effect: a positive effect from a placebo treatment, attributed to the patient’s belief rather than the placebo’s properties
3. demand characteristics: participant’s unintentional behavior changes based on perceived experiment purpose
4. hawthorne effect: behavioral changes in study subjects due to awareness of observation

Question 7

passive control group

Answer 7

• controls for: test-retest
• does not control for: placebo effect, demand characteristics, hawthorne effect
• use of passive control groups confound cognitive training studies. future studies should therefore account for these non-specific effects.

Question 8

active control group

Answer 8

• control group undergoes another adaptive cognitive training intervention
• controls for test-retest, placebo effect, demand characteristics, and hawthorne effects
• use of active (placebo) control group resulted in no evidence of improvement in intelligence after WM training
• however, in 2015 a small effect of an n-back training on improving fluid intelligence was found, so this is still an ongoing debate

Question 9

transfer effects (of WM training)

Answer 9

1. far transfer: improvement in a different cognitive ability, like intelligence
2. intermediate transfer: improvement in a related ability, like selective attention
3. near transfer: imrpovement in tasks that use the same ability, like other WM tasks

• The key issue is whether brain training can lead to “far transfer” — improving cognitive abilities unrelated to the trained tasks. Many studies have found evidence only for “near transfer,” where improvements occur only in tasks similar to the ones trained.
• WM training may increase WM capacity, but does not generalize to fluid intelligence, meaning near transfer is possible, but far transfer is unlikely

Question 10

hype cycle phases

Answer 10

1. technology trigger:a potential technology breakthrough kicks things off. early proof-of-concept stories and media interest trigger significant publicity. often no usable products exist and commercial viability is unproven
2. peak of inflated expectations: early publicity produces a number of success stories — often accompanied by scores of failures. some companies take action; most don’t
3. through of disillusionment: interest wanes as experiments and implementations fail to deliver. producers of the technology shake out or fail. investment continues only if the surviving providers improve their products to the satisfaction of early adopters
4. slope of enlightenment: more instances of how the technology can benefit the enterprise start to crystallize and become more widely understood. second- and third- generation products appear from technology providers. more enterprises fund pilots; conservative companies remain cautious
5. plateau of productivity: mainstream adoption starts to take off. criteria for assessing provider viability are more clearly defines. the technology’s broad market applicability and relevance are clearly paying of

Question 11

current concensus

Answer 11

• whether or not brain training is effective is still an ongoing debate
• WM training may improve performance on similar tasks that call upon WM (near transfer)
• active control groups are critical
• memory games paper: conflicting results are expected in a young field like cognitive training, especially when even meta-analyses do not agree

Question 12

current directions for research

Answer 12

1. individual difference in training effectiveness: effects may depend on initial WM ability, so it may work better for some individuals than others (poor vs. high, healthy vs. impaired)
2. realistic training approaches: games must be more real-life like
3. more research testing transfer of training to real-life WM performance

Question 13

critical design features

Answer 13

1. active, adaptive control group: to control for test-retest and placebo effects, etc.
2. multiple transfer tasks: to determine change at levels of cognitive abilities (transfer effects), it is effential to include tasks beyond the one participants were trained on
3. multiple training tasks: to train at levels of cognitive ability, engaging participants in different types of tasks ensures a more comprehensive training regiment, potentially leading to more widespread cognitive benefits
4. follow-up assessments: to determine how long effects may last. these are necessary to determine the long-term effects of the training
5. daily life measurements: to determine transfer to everyday life tasks
6. large sample size: to have enough statistical power
7. preregistration: prevents “p-hacking” or altering hypotheses after seeing the data to fit a desired result
8. double blind studies (where possible): reduces bias from both sides, preventing expectations from influencing the results

Question 14

the general issue of lack of transfer

Answer 14

• plasticity/learning is typically task- or stimulus-specific.
• there is little transfer to novel task contexts or stimuli

Question 15

transferability in DDNs

Answer 15

• DDNs can be easily misled or confused by subtle changes in input data, even when these changes are imperceptible to humans
• this means that while NNs are powerful within their trained domains, they often fail to generalize to new or slightly altered inputs
• more variable training enhances generalization at the cost of slower initial learning

Question 16

input variability

Answer 16

• high variability during training leads to better generalization across a range of tasks
• london taxi driver experiment: Only in London taxi drivers, who experience high variability in the routes they take, the hippocampus is enlarged. This is not the case for London bus drivers, who drive the same, fixed route every day.
• i.e., variability shapes learning and generalization in the sense that high variability leads to worse performance during the learning process (slower learning) but better generalization.

Question 17

computerized cognitive training for ADHD meta analysis

Answer 17

1. there was no support for use of CCT as stand-alone intervention for ADHD symptoms
2. small effects, of likely limited clinical importance, on inattention symptoms, but likely setting-specific

Question 18

mindfulness

Answer 18

• meditation/mindfulness-based intervention studies might be affected by placebo effects or demand characteristics
• same with other cognitive enhancement methods such as psychedelics

Question 19

predictive brain view: plasticity and learning

Answer 19

• the brain does not simply undergo influences from the outside, but continuously generates its own model of the environment from within based on past experience, a reality that is continuously tested against the affordances of the outside world
• plasticity: not simply the result of outside influences (or the capacity to receive form), but very much about the capacity to produce form from within
• learning: a generative, top-down process, geared toward predicting what signals provide accurate information for goal-directed action in a given context
• i.e., the brain is not a passive learner.

Question 20

reverse hierarchy theory of visual perceptual learning

Answer 20

learning is a top-down guided process

• initial vision at a glance depends on global, high-level object and category representations built by implicit feedforward connections. this way, initial high-level learning transfers over basic stimulus parameters
• when these do not suffice, learning progresses downwards to the input levels, which have a better signal-to-noise ratio (explicit feedback connections). so, later vision with scrutiny is a return to simple feature details available at low levels. thus, later low-level learning is parameter-specific, being a low-level modification by guided return down the reverse hierarcy.
• learning takes place at the lowest level possible, generalization/transfer happens at higher levels

Question 21

category-based transfer of learning

Answer 21

• learning at a categorical can transfer to recognizing new, untrained examples within the same category.
• this might generalize to the natural environment in a more useful way

Question 22

what constitutes transfer: common assumptions within cognitivism

Answer 22

• according to the view that cognitive functions are general or amodal, transfer occurs because the skills or knowledge acquired during learning are not tied to a specific sensory modality, task, or context. Instead, the learning is abstract enough to be applied across different situations, or occurs at the cognitive-process level
• in cognitive training, transfer is therefore expected when learning is decontextualized
• e.g., learning a problem-solving approach in mathematics (e.g., breaking down a complex problem into simpler parts) can transfer to solving problems in engineering or even daily life.

Question 23

what constitutes transfer: critique of the functionalist/cognitivist view

Answer 23

• in the cognitivist view the environment in which transfer is expected is not seen as integral to learning. Instead, it is seen as something that either supports or interferes with learning
• however, removing learning from its context doesn’t necessarily lead to generalization of transfer.
• the critique of this view emphasizes the importance of context and real-world environments in the learning process
• i.e., In summary, cognitivism emphasizes the belief that cognitive training leads to transfer when learning is decontextualized and abstract, while the critique of this view emphasizes the importance of context and real-world environments in the learning process.

Question 24

transfer according to situative/enactive cognition

Answer 24

• this account emphasizes both content knowledge and social positioning
• transfer is redefined as the extent to which participating in an activity in one situation influences one’s ability to participate in another activity in a different situation.
• what transfers is not knowledge from task to task, but patterns of participation across situations

Question 25

transfer experiments

Answer 25

Lave (1988): can become an unnatural laboratory game in which the task becomes to get the subjects to match the experimenter’s expectations, rather than an investigation of the prcoesses employed as people naturally bring their knowledge to bear on novel problems

Question 26

long-standing debate: is learning always context bound

Answer 26

• i.e., surrounding the idea of whether cognitive skills are dependent on specific contexts or whether they can be generalized across different domains
• Perkins and Salomon suggest a middle ground. They argue that both general strategic knowledge (problem-solving skills, decision-making strategies) and specialized domain knowledge (specific expertise in a field) work together in a close partnership. Thus, some aspects of cognitive skill can be generalized, while others remain context-specific.
• General and contextualized function in close partnership
• there are general cognitive skills, but these always seem to operate on some content, so they come about in interaction with specialized knowledge.
• e.g., attention can be used in any context (general), but is always focused at something specific (contextualized)

Question 27

computerized WM training outcome

Answer 27

effects seem to generalize to similar tasks (near transfer)

Question 28

evaluation of cognitivist view

Answer 28

may not inspire the best approach, since learning is not a passive, but a top-down driven, generative process, that is difficult to separate from the content on which, and context in which it operates.