Training Flashcards
What is the brain training market estimated at?
Over 1 billion
What are the industry’s claims built on?
The idea of generalisability
What are the 3 effects of training?
1) Practice effects e.g. improved performance on trained task (not on actual memory, just the strategies used)
2) Near transfer e.g. improved performance on other tasks measuring the same ability like driving one car, can drive another
3) Far-transfer e.g. improved performance on other tasks measuring different abilites
Outline Jaeggi et al Study on whether brain training generalises
Trained participants showed improved performance on fluid intelligence tasks, with more training = more improvement
State 2 weaknesses of Jaeggi et al Study
1) Control group did no task at all
2) Drawing conclusions based on a single task ignores confounding variables
Outline Owen et al Study on whether brain training generalises?
He found evidence for practice effects e.g. improvements on the trained tasks, but no evidence for transfer, even when transfer tasks were cognitively closely related
Name 3 problems with the literature on brain training
1) Small sample sizes
2) Selective reporting of data
3) Failing to use appropriate control groups
What evidence is there to suggest that expectations influence outcomes, involving recruitment posters?
Participants only showed improvement when they were told in the recruitment poster what was being tested, and they were led to believe that the task would improve their intelligence, which creates sampling bias and placebo effects
Outline Shute et al’s findings on whether brain training generalises
Participants who played the video game for 8 weeks showed significant increase in spatial skill, but the participants who used a brain training programme for 8 weeks did not show increases on any measure
Do benefits of brain training programmes transfer to real world tasks?
No
Who do brain training programmes target, and why is this bad?
Parents with children who have ADHD, this is unethical and they are making promises they cant deliver
If depleting resources by performing a task influences performance of any other self-control task, what does this mean?
That building resources by practicing tasks will work in the same way
What did Denson et al find about a self-control training task and aggressive behaviour?
That participants who used their non-dominant hand between 8 and 6 every day for 2 weeks, had decreased aggressive behaviour but only for participants who were already high on aggression, and there was no significant difference or interaction effect
How many different quantification strategies of Denson et als competitive reaction time task was used?
156 in 130 publications
What was the Cohen’s d figure found by Hagger et al of how training reduced ego depletion, and what does this imply?
It was 1.07, and as .8 is large, this means that training does reduce ego depletion
Despite this high Cohen’s d figure of training reducing ego depletion, what else was found from three more recent meta analyses?
Publication bias and questionable effects, found that practice was much less likely to improve self-control than first thought
Many of the same problems in the brain training literature apply to this practicing self-control literature, list 3 of them
1) Lack of active control groups
2) No checks on adherence to training
3) Flexibility in analysis and reporting
When a highly powered and well controlled design is used, was the effect of practicing self-control still reliable?
No, training did not improve performance after or during ego depletion, and there were no differences between the training and control conditions
However, name 3 weaknesses of this key reading study?
1) Bias sample of university students, who probably already have strategies in place to assist self-control and are in the mindset anyway
2) Alternative reasons for the results e.g. fatigue, boredom
3) Habituation effects e.g. required less self-control over time
What is a Bayesian Analysis?
Asks if the data is more likely if the experimental hypothesis was true, or if the null hypothesis was true
What was the Bayes factor for the key reading, and what does this imply?
0.22, a factor below 0.3 indicates substantial evidence for the null hypothesis
What 3 things should training focus on to be more effective, instead of inhibition?
1) Motivation
2) Self-efficacy
3) Beliefs
What is mindfulness?
Attention to the present moment and having non-judgemental awareness
Name 3 ways that mindfulness can be trained?
1) MBSR (mindfulness based stress reduction)
2) MBCT (mindfulness based cognitive therapy)
These both involve meditation, body-scanning and mindful movement exercises
3) Online interventions
Name 3 benefits that mindfulness is associated with
1) Stress
2) Depression
3) Anxiety
Name 3 ways that mindfulness can help people to self-regulate?
1) More aware of cues that signal need for self-control
2) De-automatizes our emotional and cognitive reactions
3) More aware and attentive so less acting on auto-pilot
Outline the 3 different ways to test if Mindfulness helps people to self-regulate?
1) Correlations e.g. mediators show better performance on self-control lab tasks, but this isn’t causal
2) Short term effects e.g. participants who meditated before a second task in an ego depletion paradigm had a reduced effect of depletion
3) Long term effects e.g. 8-week MBCT intervention improved emotional eating and body image concern in people with eating disorders, but no effect of app-based mindfulness training on smoking abstinence at 6 months
Where is there an increase in mindfulness, and why?
In cooperate settings, as framing wellbeing and mental health as an individual responsibility takes responsibility away from the employer
What did Miles find about the effect of training
That there was no effect of training on any measure of self-control
