A variety of cognitive exercises improves memory

If you search, most readers will have a friend or acquaintance who is incredibly good at some “smart stuff.” From playing chess or knowing English, to a deep understanding of algorithms, programming, or the ability to work with technology. If you don’t have such a friend, then perhaps such a “smart guy” is you. Being able to do something well is honorable and interesting. But it is much more effective to master several different areas of cognitive exercises.

Our nature: of the body, society, mind, avoids monopolization. By focusing on one characteristic, a person suddenly begins to lose in others. And it is precisely adaptability that becomes an evolutionary attribute. Whether it is adaptability to physical difficulties or mental stress. More about the brain and the features of its work – tell Telegram channel materials. Subscribe to stay up to date with new articles!

Diversity in cognitive loads

I practice in different conditions and contexts. I practice hungry, tired, angry and happy. I practice different songs at different speeds and sometimes on different pianos. It is the variety of practice that helps maintain the bar of a better performer.

Ilber Manavbasi, a graduate research student at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.

According to a recent study by Ilber Manavbasi and colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, diversity also helps people acquire new knowledge, skills, and abilities more effectively. It may the reason lies in dopamine?

The researchers found that varied practice, rather than repetition alone, helped older adults significantly improve their working memory. Materials, published in the journal Intelligence, suggest that varied cognitive training will be an effective sharpening stone for maintaining mental sharpness as we age.

Background to the Study of Cognitive Development

People often think that the best way to get good at something is to simply practice it over and over again, but in fact, it is the variety of practice that supports strong skill acquisition. While the importance of variety in practice is well-known in the field of motor learning, our research has shown that this principle applies to developing mental skills as well.

Lead researcher Elizabeth A. L. Stein-Morrow, professor of educational psychology at Illinois.

In their 1978 study, Kerr and Booth found that children who practiced throwing a bean bag at a target from a specific distance were less likely to hit the target than children who practiced throwing from multiple distances.

On a larger scale, researchers have observed different training methods that promote high performance in both sports and academics.

World-class athletes who specialize in one sport are more likely to have early experience in multiple sports than their national-level counterparts. And Nobel laureates are more likely to have early experience in training and working outside their discipline than national prize winners.

Lead researcher Elizabeth A. L. Stein-Morrow, professor of educational psychology at Illinois.

These findings prompted the question: Can this concept be transferred to cognitive training? If training were a sport, would a varied exercise regimen improve brain performance?

Research procedure

The researchers narrowed their focus to working memory, or the cognitive ability to keep one thing in mind while doing something else.

We chose working memory because it is the core ability needed to interact with reality and create knowledge. It underlies language comprehension, reasoning, problem solving, and many types of everyday cognition.

Lead researcher Elizabeth A. L. Stein-Morrow, professor of educational psychology at Illinois.

Because working memory often declines with age, Stein-Morrow and her colleagues recruited 90 respondents between the ages of 60 and 87.

At the beginning and end of the study, the researchers assessed the participants' working memory through reading span: the ability to remember information while reading something unrelated.

The researchers asked participants to read and understand a series of logical and illogical sentences. “The headdress worn by members of the royal family is called a crown,” or “The animal with orange and black stripes is a zebra.” Each sentence was associated with a specific letter of the alphabet.

The more accurately a research participant reproduces sentences in the correct order, the more efficient his working memory is.

How exactly did variety in training improve memory?

Between memory assessments, participants underwent four weeks of cognitive training. During the first two weeks, participants trained by trying four practice conditions in turn: a reading span task, a new working memory task, several working memory tasks, and a non-working memory control task. During the final two weeks, all participants practiced the reading span task.

Participants who practiced multiple working memory tasks showed the greatest improvement in reading span scores, outperforming those who rehearsed the reading span task for all four weeks.

The researchers noted that although the mixed practice group ultimately made the most progress, it did not immediately outperform the others.

Lack of rapid productivity gains

They needed to work on this. Mixed practice didn't directly lead to better performance, it led to better learning. This group improved the slowest on the reading span task, but they eventually peaked the highest.

Lead researcher Elizabeth A. L. Stein-Morrow, professor of educational psychology at Illinois.

One reason why varied practice can help develop skills, Stein-Morrow says, is the principle of mutualism, or “the mutual growth of closely related abilities.” These results provide early evidence for the concept of mutualism and offer the prospect of improving and self-development working memory in later life.

In this study, we demonstrated the broad principle of mutualism through the narrow lens of how it applies to working memory. If you scale this principle up and combine it with different kinds of skills, it will yield broader effects.

Lead researcher Elizabeth A. L. Stein-Morrow, professor of educational psychology at Illinois.

Spraying or multi-learning is a matter of personal motive. If a person rushes into one area, then into another, and makes a choice only because it seems right to him, then this is a dispersion of potential. But if a person makes a conscious choice in favor of different types of activity that lead to one result and maintains focus on this result, then here we are already talking about lability and super-adaptability.

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