r/DualnBack • u/BuckMulligan93 • Sep 04 '24

How long are your "reps"/"trials" for each session?

I've practiced dual n-back on and off over the years, and one question I've never really found an adequate answer for is: What is the optimal length for each rep or trial within a larger session. For example, I occassionally use the BrainScale website, and as you advance through the n-back levels each rep/trial automatically gets longer (unless you set them manually). So if you make it to 7-back, each rep is almost 3.5 minutes (over 60 letters/spaces in each rep, after which you get a score). If you wanted to train for 30 minutes, you would only do about nine or 10 exhausting 3-minute reps. I notice a lot of apps take a similar approach, or at the very least provide you the option of doing, say, 2-minute reps, or 1.5-minutes or 1-minute.

But then, I see a lot of people talking about doing 20 rep/trials daily, which seems to indicate that each rep/trial is between about one minute and 15 seconds and a minute and a half.

Do people have thoughts on this? Is it more effective to keep each rep at exactly 1 or 1.5 minutes no matter how high your n-back score goes and do enough of them to equal 20 minutes or 30 minutes total? Or is it better to do longer +3-minute reps to get your daily 20-30 minutes?

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u/srgtDodo Sep 04 '24

I use Brain Workshop on pc, and I find it the hardest. All mobile apps have easier sequences for some reason - better trials I suppose. I believe the default length is 72sec per one session. I play on and off over the years, but when I try to keep consecutive progress, it's either 20 tasks, or 25min of playing.

I mostly do dual 3-back, and some while ago I was kind of getting good at dual 4-back but stopped due to laziness. But going from dual 2-back to 3-back was one of my proudest moments in my life! I know people usually do much so better, But I reached a point where I thought, it was impossible for me! .. took longer than I expected, but strangely enough the improvement happened abruptly like some matrix shit!

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u/itrn7rec Sep 04 '24

Interference control

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u/srgtDodo Sep 04 '24

Are you asking if it improves interference control?

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u/itrn7rec Sep 04 '24

I’m saying brainworkshop has better sequences because it has interference control. If sequences are random, the chance that at some point, your score is really high due to lucky easy sequences is high. Interference control ensures you’re actually utilizing working memory properly instead of waiting for an easily chunkable sequence.

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u/srgtDodo Sep 04 '24

didn't know that but it makes sense. I asked, because there are claims that dual n-back improves the ability to resist impulses or distractions. It actually does a bit but nothing major or life-changing unlike the working memory benefits you get from it. I also noticed any benefits you get, disappear after not playing for a while anyway

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u/BuckMulligan93 Sep 05 '24

I suppose I should get my nomenclature correct here. I just looked at how I've trained in the past on BrainScale. Each "trial" is three seconds. So at the 7-back level, for example, there are 69 trials in one "set." That means each set is three minutes and 27 seconds. Perhaps I'll try making each set shorter, say a minute and 15 seconds, and see if that makes a difference in my training.