Megan Spencer-Smith

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59 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Mar 2015 last heard Mar 2015

Megan Spencer-Smith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Health Report · 23 March 2015 · 23 Mar 2015 podcast

There's some programs that have been developed just for research purposes.

And then there's some programs that are now available commercially.

That's correct,

In general, the individual would be on a computer and they're training on tasks that are presented on the computer or an iPad.

These training tasks are visual spatial working memory tasks or they're verbal working memory tasks or they're using a combination of both.

So they're training repeatedly on these tasks over many weeks and over many days.

That's right.

We're trying to strengthen those connections.

And there's also some evidence from neuroscience research demonstrating that a working memory training program can change brain structure and function.

Yeah, there's been an accumulation of research over the last 10 years and there are quite a few randomised controlled child design studies evaluating the effects of these different working memory training programs compared with a control group.

When we systematically searched the literature, and we also contacted researchers who are in the area who might not have published their data, when we pulled the results from those studies together, we identified 11 studies that have a control group

and an intervention group, and these studies were reporting on inattention in daily life.

So that's a measure of a generalizing benefit of the working memory training program.

That's a really good question, and it's something that we wanted to address in the meta-analysis.

So we focused on studies that were reporting on benefits in daily life.

So either the individual themself or a teacher or a parent describes that individual's behaviour by rating their behaviour.

correct,

So we found that when we compared these 11 studies with an intervention and control group and pulled the data together and did the meta-analysis, this main analysis showed that the treatment effect was significant and also moderate.

So the effect size was 0.47.

What does

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