| Working memory plays a vital role in advanced cognitive functions at the individual level,and thus,research on working memory training has gained considerable attention.However,the underlying mechanisms of the efficacy of working memory training still require further investigation.According to the Strategy Mediation hypothesis,using effective strategies in working memory training can enhance its training effects,leading to its transfer to homologous tasks.This hypothesis provides a fresh perspective on the mechanisms underlying transfer effects of working memory training.However,it is worth noting which type of cognitive strategy is more effective in short-term(3 trials)and long-term(12 trials)training and transfer of working memory.Therefore,the current study aims to explore the impact of different cognitive strategies on their training and transfer effects by comparing their effects on short-term and long-term training and transfer of working memory.The study used an adaptive digital n-back task as the training task and randomly assigned 82 college students to four groups,including a general strategy intervention group,specific strategy intervention group,self-generated strategy group,and active control group.The experimental procedure was designed as a "pre-test-training 3times-intermediate-test-training 9 times-post-test" program.The transfer tasks included:specific and near transfer tasks,adaptive n-back tasks(digits,letters,colors,spaces);general and near transfer tasks,spatial working memory tasks(numeric 1750/750,space),and sustained attention tasks(numeric positive/negative,space).During the testing process,a questionnaire was used to understand the participants’ strategy use,attention to strategy,and the impact of strategies on transfer effects.The results showed that all groups exhibited significant improvements in tasks that are homologous to the working memory training task.Specifically,the general strategy intervention and specific strategy intervention groups performed significantly better than the self-generated strategy group in short-term training(3 trials),with the general strategy intervention group exhibiting better performance.However,there was no difference between the three strategy group types after long-term training(12 trials),and none of them showed general or far transfer effects to tasks that are structurally different from the training task.This suggests that the different types of external cognitive strategies used in working memory training have short-term effects and the use of different types of cognitive strategies in long-term training of working memory produces similar specific task near-transfer effects,but may not produce general near-transfer and far-transfer effects,further validating the theory of strategy mediation hypothesis. |
