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      Working Memory Training Does Not Improve Performance on Measures of Intelligence or Other Measures of “Far Transfer” : Evidence From a Meta-Analytic Review

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          Abstract

          It has been claimed that working memory training programs produce diverse beneficial effects. This article presents a meta-analysis of working memory training studies (with a pretest-posttest design and a control group) that have examined transfer to other measures (nonverbal ability, verbal ability, word decoding, reading comprehension, or arithmetic; 87 publications with 145 experimental comparisons). Immediately following training there were reliable improvements on measures of intermediate transfer (verbal and visuospatial working memory). For measures of far transfer (nonverbal ability, verbal ability, word decoding, reading comprehension, arithmetic) there was no convincing evidence of any reliable improvements when working memory training was compared with a treated control condition. Furthermore, mediation analyses indicated that across studies, the degree of improvement on working memory measures was not related to the magnitude of far-transfer effects found. Finally, analysis of publication bias shows that there is no evidential value from the studies of working memory training using treated controls. The authors conclude that working memory training programs appear to produce short-term, specific training effects that do not generalize to measures of “real-world” cognitive skills. These results seriously question the practical and theoretical importance of current computerized working memory programs as methods of training working memory skills.

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          Trim and Fill: A Simple Funnel-Plot-Based Method of Testing and Adjusting for Publication Bias in Meta-Analysis

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            Power failure: why small sample size undermines the reliability of neuroscience.

            A study with low statistical power has a reduced chance of detecting a true effect, but it is less well appreciated that low power also reduces the likelihood that a statistically significant result reflects a true effect. Here, we show that the average statistical power of studies in the neurosciences is very low. The consequences of this include overestimates of effect size and low reproducibility of results. There are also ethical dimensions to this problem, as unreliable research is inefficient and wasteful. Improving reproducibility in neuroscience is a key priority and requires attention to well-established but often ignored methodological principles.
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              Introduction to Meta-Analysis

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Perspect Psychol Sci
                Perspect Psychol Sci
                PPS
                sppps
                Perspectives on Psychological Science
                SAGE Publications (Sage CA: Los Angeles, CA )
                1745-6916
                1745-6924
                29 July 2016
                July 2016
                : 11
                : 4
                : 512-534
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Special Needs Education, University of Oslo
                [2 ]Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University
                [3 ]Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, and Department of Special Needs Education, University of Oslo
                Author notes
                [*]Thomas S. Redick, Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, 703 Third Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907 E-mail: tredick@ 123456purdue.edu
                [*]Monica Melby-Lervåg, Department of Special Needs Education, University of Oslo, Pb 1140 Blindern, 0318 Oslo, Norway E-mail: monica.melby-lervag@ 123456isp.uio.no
                [*]Charles Hulme, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, Chandler House, 2 Wakefield Street, London, WC1N 2PF, United Kingdom E-mail: c.hulme@ 123456ucl.ac.uk
                Article
                10.1177_1745691616635612
                10.1177/1745691616635612
                4968033
                27474138
                e949dd3a-04fe-4d93-b922-00b4423ff50a
                © The Author(s) 2016

                This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License ( http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page ( https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

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                working memory,training,meta-analysis,transfer
                working memory, training, meta-analysis, transfer

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