Cognitive neuroscience of training and transfer in working memory and visual attention

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2015.

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Thompson, Todd Wesley
Other Authors: John D. E. Gabreli.
Format: Thesis
Language:eng
Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/97787
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author Thompson, Todd Wesley
author2 John D. E. Gabreli.
author_facet John D. E. Gabreli.
Thompson, Todd Wesley
author_sort Thompson, Todd Wesley
collection MIT
description Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2015.
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spelling mit-1721.1/977872019-04-10T09:12:22Z Cognitive neuroscience of training and transfer in working memory and visual attention Thompson, Todd Wesley John D. E. Gabreli. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2015. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Includes bibliographical references (pages 133-142). The trained enhancement of working memory and visual attention has both theoretical implications for understanding the architectures of cognition, as well as practical implications for education and clinical treatment. In particular, transfer of training from one task to another may reveal shared psychological processes or neural systems across domains of cognition. In three experiments presented here, participants underwent a month of intensive training on either a complex working memory task or a visual attention task. Although participants made substantial gains on the trained tasks, that training did not yield transfer to untrained tasks measuring fluid intelligence, reading comprehension, or processing speed (Experiment 1). Brain imaging conducted before and after training revealed that increased working memory performance was accompanied by decreases of functional activation within anatomically circumscribed regions of frontal and parietal cortex as well as more wide-spread increases in frontoparietal functional connectivity (Experiment 2). Visual attention training using adaptively adjusted speeds on a multiple object tracking task revealed sizeable gains on the task itself, and those gains enabled the tracking of an increased number of items at a constant speed. This transfer from speed to quantity suggests that a common process underlies tracking speed and tracking capacity in visual attention (Experiment 3). by Todd Wesley Thompson. Ph. D. 2015-07-17T19:46:26Z 2015-07-17T19:46:26Z 2015 2015 Thesis http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/97787 911649747 eng M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 142 pages application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology
spellingShingle Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
Thompson, Todd Wesley
Cognitive neuroscience of training and transfer in working memory and visual attention
title Cognitive neuroscience of training and transfer in working memory and visual attention
title_full Cognitive neuroscience of training and transfer in working memory and visual attention
title_fullStr Cognitive neuroscience of training and transfer in working memory and visual attention
title_full_unstemmed Cognitive neuroscience of training and transfer in working memory and visual attention
title_short Cognitive neuroscience of training and transfer in working memory and visual attention
title_sort cognitive neuroscience of training and transfer in working memory and visual attention
topic Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/97787
work_keys_str_mv AT thompsontoddwesley cognitiveneuroscienceoftrainingandtransferinworkingmemoryandvisualattention