Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by DigitalJack 3167 days ago
I thought the unique aspect here was comparing techniques against each other. Not that the techniques hadn't been studied.

It didn't seem like a great distinction to me, but maybe it eliminates control issues when comparing two studies of different techniques vs comparing two different techniques in one study.
1 comments
Bartweiss 3167 days ago
Yeah, I think the head-to-head between techniques is what's novel about the paper. But what confused me is that they got a strong positive off dual n-back in the first place; other studies of that exact technique have regularly come up ambiguous-to-negative.
link
JamesBarney 3167 days ago
The studies on Dual-N-Back increasing IQ have been all over the place. Some positive some negative. With the larger more careful trials coming up negative.

But IQ isn't working memory, attention, or executive function. And the findings on Dual-N-Back and working memory are less ambiguous and more positive.

Also there have been some more interesting studies done on Dual-N-Back in terms of changing Type 1 dopamine receptor density, as well as volume changes in certain parts of the pre-frontal cortex. So it really does seem like it's doing something even if that doesn't translate into an IQ change.

link
Bartweiss 3166 days ago
> the findings on Dual-N-Back and working memory are less ambiguous and more positive

Huh, I guess this is what I was missing. I had the impression that even on working memory in particular, dual-n-back had mostly failed on a practical level - it just created training effects that broke the validity of certain tests.

If that's not the case, I'm suddenly much more interested.

link