4 ms·
What exactly does "near WM" mean? Does this improve working memory on a long term basis or does near mean near in time? I feel like that might make it worth d
by cgag 13y ago
What exactly does "near WM" mean? Does this improve working memory on a long term basis or does near mean near in time? I feel like that might make it worth doing for me as a programmer as WM feels like a useful thing to improve even if it doesn't directly translate to IQ.
- gwern 13y agoThere's a bunch of WM tasks floating around, all slightly different: forward digit span, backward digit span, verbal spans, complex spans using arithmetic, game-like WM tasks designed for children, suites of WM tasks like Cogmed, tests included in quantified-mind.com or Lumosity or Cambridge Brainsciences, etc. These are what I mean by n-back may 'near' transfer to other WM tasks which are not themselves n-back. As to how valuable WM is, I'm not sure. There were a bunch of positive papers from people like Klingberg, but these tend to use subjective measures or WM-related measures, and there seems to be an absence of studies tying the WM training to concrete useful changes like improved grades or standardized exam scores.
- sanxiyn 13y agoThis is completely unsupported intuition, but I won't be surprised if programming especially benefits from working memory more than other aspects of intelligence. That is, it seems possible improved working memory improves programming, without improving grades or exam scores.
- gwern 13y agoI think that's possible too, but I have no idea how one would study that. The empirical study of programming languages is still in its infancy - we can't even say with high confidence whether dynamic or static languages are better to work in, much less show that WM increases cause programming improvements.