Does Improving Working Memory Make People Smarter?

From the Marshall Memo #441

In this Education Week article, Sarah Sparks reports on new research that questions whether improving working memory boosts general intelligence, problem-solving ability, and academic achievement. A review of 23 studies in Developmental Psychology found that exercises to improve working memory produced few long-term benefits, and a randomized, controlled study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General came to the same conclusion.

Working memory temporarily holds incoming information as people analyze and make decisions. Up to half of the variation in an individual’s intelligence is explained by working-memory capacity. Seven-year-olds can hold 3-5 “chunks” of unrelated information in their heads, and by age 12 this increases to about seven chunks – the number that the average adult can hold. Brain science has produced a broad consensus on the “plasticity” of the brain – that doing a task repeatedly will strengthen neural pathways and improve that capacity the same way repeatedly lifting a weight strengthen arm muscles. 

But do exercises to boost working memory lead to improvements in overall brainpower the way exercise strengthens the heart? There’s an multimillion-dollar market of products that claim this is so, including Pearson’s Cogmed Working Memory Training, Memosyne Ltd.’s JungleMemory, and Mind Sparke’s Brain Fitness Pro. 

Many researchers are dubious. Charles Hulme, a psychology professor at University College London, calls the claims of working-memory training “a lot of hype.” Alvaro Fernandez of SharpBrains, a market research company in San Francisco, says, “The brain-fitness software industry is only in its infancy. It is an emerging and largely unregulated market where many products have limited clinical validation and often present confusing claims that make it difficult for consumers to separate wheat from chaff.” 

“I’m a little torn,” says Thomas Redick of Indiana University/Purdue University Columbus, one of the authors of the randomized study mentioned above. “I’m happy to see an application of basic research being used in the classroom, but I’m not sure it’s ready for prime time. For it to already be implemented in classrooms, particularly in a time of budget cuts, makes me wonder whether it might not be the most effective use of resources.” 

“Brain Training Draws Questions About Benefits” by Sarah Sparks in Education Week, June 13, 2012 (Vol. 31, #35, p. 1, 15), 

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/06/13/35memory_ep.h31.html