Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1043, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Jun 21;108(25):10081-6. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1103228108. Epub 2011 Jun 13.
Does cognitive training work? There are numerous commercial training interventions claiming to improve general mental capacity; however, the scientific evidence for such claims is sparse. Nevertheless, there is accumulating evidence that certain cognitive interventions are effective. Here we provide evidence for the effectiveness of cognitive (often called "brain") training. However, we demonstrate that there are important individual differences that determine training and transfer. We trained elementary and middle school children by means of a videogame-like working memory task. We found that only children who considerably improved on the training task showed a performance increase on untrained fluid intelligence tasks. This improvement was larger than the improvement of a control group who trained on a knowledge-based task that did not engage working memory; further, this differential pattern remained intact even after a 3-mo hiatus from training. We conclude that cognitive training can be effective and long-lasting, but that there are limiting factors that must be considered to evaluate the effects of this training, one of which is individual differences in training performance. We propose that future research should not investigate whether cognitive training works, but rather should determine what training regimens and what training conditions result in the best transfer effects, investigate the underlying neural and cognitive mechanisms, and finally, investigate for whom cognitive training is most useful.
认知训练有效吗？有许多声称可以提高一般心智能力的商业培训干预措施，但这些说法的科学证据很少。然而，有越来越多的证据表明某些认知干预是有效的。在这里，我们提供认知（通常称为“大脑”）训练有效性的证据。然而，我们证明存在重要的个体差异，这些差异决定了训练和迁移的效果。我们通过类似于视频游戏的工作记忆任务对小学生和初中生进行了训练。我们发现，只有在训练任务上有显著提高的儿童，在未受过训练的流体智力任务上才会表现出成绩提高。这种提高大于在知识型任务上训练的对照组的提高，而该对照组没有参与工作记忆；此外，即使在 3 个月的训练中断后，这种差异模式仍然保持不变。我们得出的结论是，认知训练可能是有效的，并且具有持久性，但存在限制因素，必须考虑这些因素来评估这种训练的效果，其中之一是训练表现的个体差异。我们建议未来的研究不应该调查认知训练是否有效，而应该确定什么样的训练方案和条件会产生最好的迁移效果，研究潜在的神经和认知机制，最后，研究认知训练对哪些人最有用。
