Nothing’s set in stone — and that includes our fluid intelligence. At the Association for Psychological Science in Washington, D.C. on May 28th, 2011, University of Michigan psychologist Dr. John Jonides presented new findings showing that as few as 20 days of working memory training can improve the reasoning and problem-solving abilities often referred to as fluid intelligence.
Many of you might remember Lumosity’s collaboration with the University of Michigan researchers behind the dual n-back task. Dual n-back is a working memory exercise that presents users with a series of visual and auditory stimuli and then challenges them to identify whether these stimuli match the ones that were presented a certain number (n) of trials previously.
Studies have shown that this task boosts fluid intelligence after about 20 half-hour sessions of training, and our collaboration with the Jonides lab led to the development of an online version playable on Lumosity.com. It also sparked the creation of Memory Lane, a challenging dual n-back game.
Professor Jonides’ latest research, conducted with more than 200 young adults and children, forwards the n-back investigation in several new directions. Perhaps most importantly, the new research shows that a single n-back working memory task, where one stimulus is presented instead of two, has the same positive benefits as the dual n-back task. This news should come as a welcome relief to anyone who finds dual n-back or Memory Lane especially tough.
The Jonides lab also found that the more sessions a user devoted to the n-back task, the more significant the improvement in fluid intelligence — and that these improvements can last for up to three months following the training.
Lumosity has eight n-back exercises available to subscribers. If you’re interesting in exercising working memory with n-back training, why not try Speed Match, Memory Match, or Face Memory Workout now?
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