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"No Evidence for Expectation Effects in Cognitive Training Tasks"

3/18/2021

 
​First-year doctoral student Mariya Vodyanyk (right) is first author of an article in the Journal of Cognitive Enhancement exploring placebo effects in cognitive training.
 
The title of the article is “No Evidence for Expectation Effects in Cognitive Training Tasks.”
 
Co-authors are University of Wisconsin, Madison colleagues: doctoral student Aaron Cochrane doctoral student Anna Corriveau, undergraduate researcher Zachary Demko, and Associate Professor C. Shawn Green.
 
Vodyanyk’s research interests include learning and memory, cognitive training, activity interventions, healthy development and aging, and visual art. Currently, she is focusing on the intersections of cognitive psychology, neurobiology and the process of visual art-making. Vodyanyk earned her B.S. in Neurobiology and a certificate in Art Studio, with an emphasis in painting. She has worked with a variety of community groups to advance accessible art education, teaching others how they can use such tools to aid healthy development and aging. For her doctoral work she is specializing in Human Development in Context (HDiC). Professor Susanne Jaeggi serves as her advisor.
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​Abstract
 
A great deal of recent empirical and theoretical work has examined whether it is possible to enhance cognitive functioning via behavioral (cognitive) training. While a growing body of research provides support for such a hypothesis, multiple critiques of the field have suggested that any positive findings in the field to date may be due to placebo effects, rather than reflecting “true” benefits of the training paradigms. Here, in a series of four experiments, we sought to purposefully induce placebo effects of this type in cognitive training-style setup. We did so in multiple outcome domains (fluid intelligence; spatial skills), employed multiple types of “training” paradigms (classic cognitive training using the N-back working memory task; the video game Tetris) and critically, combined explicit verbal instructions that participants in some groups “should” expect to improve their performance after completing their training with associative learning “evidence” that such improvements were occurring (via manipulated task designs). In no case, though, was a placebo effect observed. These results collectively provide evidence against the contention that placebo effects are a major driver of positive outcomes previously attributed to cognitive training interventions.

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