title: Practice makes imperfect: Working memory training can harm recognition memory performance.
abstract: There is a great deal of debate concerning the benefits of working memory (WM) training and whether that training can transfer to other tasks. Although a consistent finding is that WM training programs elicit a short-term near-transfer effect (i.e., improvement in WM skills), results are inconsistent when considering persistence of such improvement and far transfer effects. In this study, we compared three groups of participants: a group that received WM training, a group that received training on how to use a mental imagery memory strategy, and a control group that received no training. Although the WM training group improved on the trained task, their posttraining performance on nontrained WM tasks did not differ from that of the other two groups. In addition, although the imagery training group's performance on a recognition memory task increased after training, the WM training group's performance on the task decreased after training. Participants' descriptions of the strategies they used to remember the studied items indicated that WM training may lead people to adopt memory strategies that are less effective for other types of memory tasks. These results indicate that WM training may have unintended consequences for other types of memory performance.
authors.affiliation: Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, USA. lematze@sandia.gov.
authors.forename: Laura E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Matzen
authors.affiliation: Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, USA.|University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
authors.forename: Michael C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Trumbo
authors.affiliation: Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Haass
authors.affiliation: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
authors.forename: Michael A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Hunter
authors.affiliation: Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
authors.forename: Austin
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Silva
authors.affiliation: Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
authors.forename: Susan M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Stevens-Adams
authors.affiliation: University of Maryland Center for Advanced Study of Language, College Park, MD, USA.
authors.forename: Michael F
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Bunting
authors.affiliation: University of Maryland Center for Advanced Study of Language, College Park, MD, USA.
authors.forename: Polly
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: O'Rourke
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Memory strategies; Mental imagery; Recognition memory; Working memory training