ArticlePloS one2018
Improvements to visual working memory performance with practice and feedback.
Article in PloS one, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- Training Autobiographical Memory in Older Adults Using Photos From Wearable Cameras.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2025Trial
- ΔNeuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2020Trial
- A combined experimental/individual differences examination of the influence of motivation on cognitive ability assessments.Memory & cognition · 2026Article
- Impact of teacher feedback on social working memory and associations with students' fear of evaluation in adolescents.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Up, down, and all around? Deciphering the boundary conditions for training-induced transfer effects within a set of hierarchically nested tasks.Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) · 2026Article
- Evidence from multifeature whole-report in visual short-term memory suggests that not all misbinding is swapping.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Effects of Context Changes on Memory Reactivation.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- Visual working memory models of delayed estimation do not generalize to whole-report tasks.Journal of vision · 2024Article
- Dynamic computational phenotyping of human cognition.Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
- Limitations on flexible allocation of visual short-term memory resources with multiple levels of goal-directed attentional prioritization.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2024Article
- Article
- Deficits in cognitive control during alcohol consumption after bariatric surgery.Surgery for obesity and related diseases : official journal of the American Society for Bariatric Surgery · 2023Article
- Cognitive training enhances growth mindset in children through plasticity of cortico-striatal circuits.NPJ science of learning · 2022Article
- Parietal Alpha Oscillatory Peak Frequency Mediates the Effect of Practice on Visuospatial Working Memory Performance.Vision (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Systematic Review of the Longitudinal Sensitivity of Precision Tasks in Visual Working Memory.Vision (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- The effects of working memory training in children revealed by behavioral responses and ERP.Brain and behavior · 2021Article
- Distinguishing the Visual Working Memory Training and Practice Effects by the Effective Connectivity During n-back Tasks: A DCM of ERP Study.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Visual working memory capacity is estimated to be around 3-4 items, but on some trials participants fail to correctly report even a single item from the memory array. Such failures of working memory performance are surprisingly common, and participants have poor self-awareness of them. Previous work has shown that behavioral feedback can reduce the frequency of working memory failures, but the benefits of feedback disappeared immediately after it was taken away. Here, we tested whether extended practice with or without trial-by-trial feedback would lead to persistent improvements in working memory performance. Participants were assigned to one of four groups: (1) Working memory practice with feedback (2) Working memory practice without feedback (3) Crossword puzzle active control (4) No-contact control. Consistent with previous work, simple practice with a visual working memory task robustly improved working memory performance across practice sessions. However, we found only partial support for the efficacy of feedback in improving working memory performance. Practicing with feedback improved working memory performance relative to a no-feedback group for some practice sessions. However, the feedback benefits did not persist across all training sessions and did not transfer to a final test session without the feedback. Thus, the benefits of performance feedback did not persist over time. Further, we found only stimulus-specific transfer of visual working memory practice benefits. We also found that participants' metaknowledge improved with practice, but that receiving feedback about task accuracy actually slightly harmed the accuracy of concurrent metaknowledge ratings. Finally, we discuss important design considerations for future work in this area (e.g. power, expectations, and "spacing effects"). For example, we found that achieved statistical power to detect a between-groups effect declined with practice. This finding has potentially critical implications for any study using a 1-session study to calculate power for a planned multi-session study.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.