Auditory frequency discrimination is correlated with linguistic skills, but its training does not improve them or other pitch discrimination tasks.
Abstract
Brain-training, aimed at advancing and improving cognitive and perceptual abilities, is vastly studied because of its immense promise. Yet, there are major controversies regarding its main claim that intensive weeks' training on a single challenging task could improve performance in related untrained tasks. Ample training studies showing transfer were criticized for flawed design. We now explored the impact of perceptual training (auditory frequency discrimination), applying a carefully controlled intensive training experiment. First, we administered a battery of perceptual, linguistic, and cognitive tasks to a large population to determine "near" to "far" tasks according to (pretraining) correlations in performance. This assessment revealed significant correlations between simple pitch discrimination and complex linguistic tasks, including reading and syntactic reasoning. Second, we administered a broad test battery before (and after) training, which included several tasks assessing pitch discrimination, and the linguistic tasks that showed pretraining correlation with auditory frequency discrimination. The test group trained with 2 tone frequency discrimination for 40 sessions. An active control group trained with a working memory (n-back) task for the same duration, and a passive control group was only tested before and after training. Pretraining performance levels were similar in the three groups. Our results were straightforward. No transfer was found to untrained tasks that rely on pith discrimination, or to linguistic tasks that showed pretraining correlation. Mild to marginal transfer was found only to pitch discrimination tasks using almost exactly the trained protocol. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
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Since improvement was larger than three standard deviations (Jakoby et al., 2019), 14 participants per group were sufficient in both the previously studied group (no-instruction) and the newly added one (strategy-instruction group).
“Since improvement was larger than three standard deviations (Jakoby et al., 2019), 14 participants per group were sufficient in both the previously studied group (no-instruction) and the newly added one (strategy-instruction group).”
From Training-induced improvement in working memory tasks results from switching to efficient strategies (2021) · cites this paper as Jakoby et al., 2019
Most of the participants in the prior no-instruction training improved significantly in the spatial n-back task, but showed no transfer to other WM tasks.
“Most of those participants improved significantly in this task, but showed no transfer to other WM tasks.”
From Training-induced improvement in working memory tasks results from switching to efficient strategies (2021) · cites this paper as Jakoby et al., 2019
Studies that used active control groups typically found either small near-only transfer or no transfer at all.
“Studies that used active control groups (trained with a similarly demanding task and a similar reward protocol) typically found either small near-only transfer (Linares, Borella, Teresa, Id, & Carretti, 2019) or no transfer at all (Jakoby, Raviv, Jaffe-dax, Lieder, & Ahissar, 2019).”
From Training-induced improvement in working memory tasks results from switching to efficient strategies (2021) · cites this paper as Jakoby et al., 2019
Statistical power analysis shows that to get the power of 0.9 with α = 0.01, based on the results of the first and the last session of the no-instruction group (Jakoby et al., 2019), at least 10 participants are needed per group.
“Statistical power analysis shows that to get the power of 0.9 with α = 0.01, based on the results of the first and the last session of the no-instruction group (Jakoby et al., 2019), at least 10 participants are needed per group (Table 1).”
From Training-induced improvement in working memory tasks results from switching to efficient strategies (2021) · cites this paper as Jakoby et al., 2019
Performance in most other working memory tasks, and even in n-back tasks for which the efficient strategy is difficult to implement, is not expected to benefit from the discovery of this strategy.
“However, performance in most other WM tasks, and even in n-back tasks for which the strategy is difficult to implement (Jakoby et al., 2019), is not expected to benefit from the discovery of this strategy.”
From Training-induced improvement in working memory tasks results from switching to efficient strategies (2021) · cites this paper as Jakoby et al., 2019
The finding that improvement is explained by task-specific strategy discovery explains previous findings of no transfer, or only very-near transfer, to other types of the n-back task.
“This finding explains previous findings of no transfer, or only very-near transfer to other types of the n-back task (e.g., Jakoby et al., 2019; Linares et al., 2019).”
From Training-induced improvement in working memory tasks results from switching to efficient strategies (2021) · cites this paper as Jakoby et al., 2019
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Training-induced improvement in working memory tasks results from switching to efficient strategies
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- Authors
- Jakoby, H., Raviv, O., Jaffe-Dax, S., Lieder, I., & Ahissar, M.
- Affiliations
- Hebrew University of Jerusalem (IL)
- Venue
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
- Published
- 2019-11
- Volume
- 148
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 1953-1971
- ISSN
- 0096-3445 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-2222
- OpenAlex
- W2922485409
- Cited by
- 6
- References
- 25
- Citations by year
- 2023: 2 · 2022: 1 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 1.17
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Experimental Psychology General (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences
- Israel Science Foundation (616/11; 2425/15)
- German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research (I-1303–105.4/2015)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Abilities and Testing
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neuroscience and Music Perception
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Keywords
- auditory frequency discrimination, pitch discrimination, perceptual training, brain training, transfer of training, language skills, reading, n-back task, working memory, tone discrimination
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Auditory Perception, Discrimination, Psychological, Female, Humans, Linguistics, Male, Pitch Discrimination, Reading, Task Performance and Analysis, Young Adult
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